Crook and Spiral
by Lyros
Summary: Urdnot Solus always thought that what he wanted most was to see his long-lost father.  He never imagined he'd find himself signing on to chase after the lost legacy of a particularly strange human soldier.
1. Jaunt

Chapter One: Jaunt

Sol resisted the urge to reach down and scratch his quad. There were three layers of armor obstructing his reach anyway, but the itch was damned persistent. With his mother and all six of his sisters staring him down, the very last thing he wanted to do was commit some unforgivably male sin (of which scratching would undoubtedly be one). Even shifting uncomfortably in place might give him away, so he stood still while he waited for the other boot to drop.

"So. Tell us exactly what you want to do. I'm sure I didn't hear you clearly the first time."

It had been a long time since Bakara intimidated her son. Always rather large for his age, Urdnot Solus had grown taller than his mother early on in his life. The woman had presence, of course, but she almost never used it on her son. She did so now. Sol wasn't sure how it was possible for a woman a full head shorter than him to loom, but Bakara managed it.

"Zaal finally bought that ship he's been raving about for years," Sol explained patiently. "We're going to take it up into that sky and fly back to the human home world."

One of his sisters laughed. Sol thought it was the eldest of them—Brell always did have a strange sense of humor—but it was impossible to tell with the women in his family clustered together like so many seeds on a _prak_. Whoever the laugher was, Bakara silenced her with a hard stare. Then she turned her attention back to her eldest son.

"You know I don't like that skinny little quarian, but I don't choose your friends for you." She tilted her head to one side in a way that made Sol's innards squirm. "You never did tell me why Zaal wants to go to Earth so badly. If you plan on haring off to the ends of the galaxy without even a day's notice, I think you owe us all an explanation. Wrex wants you to settle down with that Quash girl he's had his eye on."

Sol grimaced. Quash Pralti was a superior specimen of her kind; Sol would have mated with her in a second if he thought he had a chance. He didn't. The woman hated biotics of any kind, and Sol had them in spades. Pralti would make some krogan grossly happy someday, but that krogan wouldn't be Sol.

"You're always telling us stories about this Commander Shepard, like he was some kind of savior to our people…" Sol began. Bakara rapped him hard across his plates, interrupting him.

"Shepard was a hero, and I won't hear a word against him. Without his sacrifice, you wouldn't even be standing here today. Try again. I suggest you think carefully about what you say. Right now I'm the only thing standing between you and your father beating you bloody."

Sol wanted to tell her that he'd already gotten a decent fight in with Grunt earlier that day, but he thought better of it just before the words made their way out of his mouth. If Bakara found out that Grunt knew about Sol's plan and meant to let him go through with it, it wouldn't go well for him. "Fine. Shepard was packing a steel quad, I get it. Zaal wants to go out and find him."

This time he was sure it was Brell laughing. He peered blandly over at her, hoping that his frown made it clear that she wasn't going to get a rise out of him.

"So the little idiot really is crazy," Bakara muttered. "Shepard died fending off the Reapers and that's the end of it. You could go out and scrape all the stars in the Sol system and you'd still never find any trace of the Citadel."

"Dr. T'soni doesn't think so," Sol returned. "She helped Zaal get his ship. Might even come with us, if I can talk her into it."

His youngest sisters had been hiding behind their larger siblings until then. As soon as he mentioned the asari, both of them burst away from the group and ran up to tug at his arms, one on each side.

"You're friends with Liara?" asked Ramira. She was slightly taller than her sister, though they were from the same clutch.

"Is she really pretty?" Teth wanted to know. The runt of Bakara's litter, she sometimes seemed to pack more life into her small body than the rest of her brothers and sisters combined. Sol scooped them both up easily and goosed them on the head with his plates.

"She really is."

"As pretty as Mama?"

Sol couldn't help smiling. "No one's as pretty as Mama."

"Good answer," Bakara snapped, but the words had no real bite to them. Sol could tell his mother was wavering, so he decided to press his advantage while he still had it.

"It's not like I'm going away forever. Dad spent years out in space, and look at him; he's a legend and he's not even dead yet. Maybe I won't be uniting the clans and saving our people like he did, but if I can help Zaal find any trace of the Citadel, think how important that discovery could be."

Bakara shook her head ruefully. "You've been spending too much time with the asari You're even starting to sound a bit like her. It's hard to believe you're your father's son." She grinned. "That's a compliment, by the way."

"I know."

Sol endured the attentions of his sisters for a little while longer. Still very young, they quickly lost interest and clamored to be let down. Watching them run off into the green chaos of hanging vines and flowers that was the females' garden, Sol knew he was going to miss them. He might even miss Brell if he was out in space long enough.

"At least tell him you're going," Bakara told him with some resignation. "I'll never hear the end of it if I let you disappear without a proper thrashing."

"Yeah, I'll get right on that."

Sol had known as soon as he'd started plotting this little trip that he wasn't going to say anything about it to Wrex until he had something to show for his trouble. His father might be a master manipulator and a devious statesman, but like any krogan, he only respected results. Sol had never been comfortable around him anyway. For his younger brothers it was different; they were still children and anyway they'd known their fathers. Sol was already a full adult when Wrex arrived home from Earth. He was the old grouch's only blood son, but no amount of shamanic mysticism could restore all the years they'd spent not knowing each other. Part of Sol wanted to stay and get to know Wrex, but only a small part.

The space port was as busy as it had ever been. Few of the other space-faring races cared to visit Tuchanka even now, but Sol saw plenty of asari here as well as a few salarians who were capitalizing on the good will his namesake had earned. The krogan were still acclimating to the idea that they could have their own ships to come and go in as they pleased. Even Sol remembered how uncharacteristically tentative his people had been about their new attempts at space travel. With a little help from their asari and salarian allies, krogan engineers found their way to a uniquely Tuchankan ship design. Apparently the original plan included more guns than the ship's propulsion system could support, but eventually the designers reached a compromise between firepower and maneuverability. It was really too bad that Sol was going to be traveling on a quarian ship. There was something really appealing about the idea of owning one of the first krogan battle cruisers.

Taking a few moments to pause and soak up his last helping of Tuchankan sunlight, he noticed a flurry of movement at the corner of his vision. At first he ignored it; it was just some asari snack vendor waving her arms around while she argued with a krogan female twice her size. Standard haggling procedure on Tuchanka. Then he saw that the little blue woman had come out from behind her stall and was slowly pressing her prospective customer across the floor in Sol's direction. He was impressed. There weren't many asari who could push a krogan around, but this woman seemed to be doing it merely by force of personality.

"Do you have any idea how much it costs to transport _kulu_ nuts this far across the galaxy? Do you? Because let me tell you; it ain't cheap."

"I…I didn't know."

"Obviously! I didn't fly all this way just to have some backwater misfit pinch credits while my business goes under. You pay my prices, or you requisition a ship to take you to Thessia yourself!"

"Yes, of course. I'll pay. Just—stop shouting at me. Please."

Sol grinned privately. It was fairly obvious that the lady krogan had the hots for the asari. Probably she had only provoked the confrontation to get the other woman's attention. Satisfied that his plates were warm enough to last him at least through takeoff, Sol steered clear of the pair and started off down the terminal.

"Did you really think I came to this old rock just to sell nuts? Pft. Asshole."

The whisper was completely unexpected, as was the thin blade that slid into a crack in his armor to pierce the outermost layer of his skin. Somehow the asari had broken free of her hopeful paramour and made her way around behind Sol's back without him seeing her. Instinct born of long practice made him pull up his barrier. It wouldn't do anything about the knife protruding from his side, but at least it might keep him from taking any more damage. Whirling on the spot, Sol fired a bright biotic blast at the spot where he anticipated his attacker would be.

She was gone. The blue sphere of Sol's biotics launched through the air at the krogan female. She looked at him like she had no idea what in all the hells he thought he was doing. Sol managed to keep his biotics from hitting her, but it was close. His mind reeled from the punishment of reabsorbing the singularity.

The asari didn't give him any time to recover. She fell on him from above, trying to maneuver a small pistol into place so she could blast through his plates. Sol felt her arm wrap around his neck. He felt the cold metal of the gun touch his skin.

"Fuck this," he muttered. Taking hold of the asari's slender wrist, he flung her across the terminal with all the muscle and biotic power he could muster. She smashed into a wall opposite him with a satisfying crunch. The wall dented outward a bit, and Sol wondered vaguely if he might have overdone it. He thought he heard a man scream, and he sensed several people running away in various directions. It was difficult to tell as the world narrowed to the battle haze that colored his vision and sent him charging after the tiny blue brat who'd tried to kill him.

* * *

><p>Zaal worried anxiously at his lower lip as he waited. Even a week after cobbling together the funds to buy this ship, he was still so giddy he wanted to jump up from the helm and go run laps around the cargo bay. Where the hell was Sol anyway? He should have been aboard the <em>Treno<em> hours ago.

"_An anomaly in your heart rate monitor suggests that you are experiencing a high degree of stress, Captain. Would you like me to play some calming music for you? The salarian jazz band Viridian has just released a new album. The melody of the first track is most compelling."_

"Thanks for the thought, Quelb, but you know I hate jazz."

"_Like fine wine, jazz can only be properly appreciated upon repeated exposure. I believe you will come to enjoy the medium if you give it a chance."_

There was a haughty note in the synthesized voice that came in over the loudspeaker. Zaal resisted the urge to snap back. Prior experience had taught him that Quelb could easily out-sass him. Maybe it was all the extra processing power.

"I gave it a chance," he insisted, "and I still don't like it. You listen to whatever you want in that tin box you call quarters. Just leave me out of it."

"_As you wish. By your tone, I infer that you suspect I have not allocated enough space for my living arrangements. While I appreciate your concern Captain, I assure you that I am perfectly happy in my place by the engine room. My organic components are few, so in my physical form and habits I resemble my geth predecessors. Thus, I require less room than the other members of the crew."_

"That's a little more information than I needed," Zaal told his varn navigator. He grinned a bit, knowing Quelb could see. The varn could be strange sometimes, but he was good company when he wasn't trying to foist jazz or hanar limericks on his captain.

"Any word from Sol yet?"

Zaal worried that he might never get used to the way that Tana seemed to pop out of nowhere. Rationally he knew the raloi girl was simply capable of great feats of stealth. Knowing the avian could move silently and actually comprehending it were two different things though.

"I've asked you I don't know how many times not to sneak up on me," Zaal said pleadingly. He swung his chair around so he could look up at his friend. Tana looked completely unrepentant.

"You know I don't mean to frighten you Zaal," she hooted in her high, scratchy voice. "Not my fault you're as jumpy as a hatchling. Now answer my question, or you'll be eating pasta for a week. No sauce."

Zaal blanched. He had a weakness for turian cuisine, and Tana was the only one onboard who knew how to prepare it. She also knew how to grow the ingredients in the ship's biosphere, which was just another reason to bring her along, even if she did have a penchant for scaring Zaal out of his envirosuit.

"Anything but that! No, I haven't heard from Sol. I'm starting to get a little worried."

"_Urdnot Solus remains within the confines of the temple gardens," _Quelb put in. _"It is unlikely that he will come to harm while he is visiting with his family."_

Zaal chuckled ruefully. "You don't know the clan chief's wife very well, do you?"

"_That is correct, Captain. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Urdnot Bakara. It is my hope that this lack will be ameliorated upon the completion of our expedition."_

"Maybe Sol decided he can't handle eating grass for weeks on end," Tana mused. She fluffed out the gray feathers on her wings and gave Zaal a disturbing raptor's grin. When her beak tilted up like that, it was easy to think she was preparing to use it on him. He dropped his head into his hands.

"Are we really going to have this argument again? If I could have gotten us a bigger ship, I would have."

"_A larger vessel would require an expanded crew, Doctor Habaq. Recruitment of the necessary personnel would constitute an unacceptable delay to our departure."_

"Thanks Quelb." Zaal was glad to have a bit of support for once. He glared over at Tana. The effect was somewhat diminished because she couldn't really see his eyes through his mask, but he thought the point was clear. "Do you have any idea how much a real liveship costs? Even if I found the right one, I'd have to get a loan from Father to pay for it. I don't think any of us want that."

Tana shook her head, ruffling the soft brown plumage piled just above her eyes. A stray feather fell down over her nose and she blew it up out of her face. "Definitely not. He'd expect us to spend all our time collecting samples along the way. I like slapping unfamiliar life forms under the microscope as much as the next girl, but right now we've got more important things to do."

"Well we won't be going anywhere until Sol gets here." Zaal turned back to the pilot's console. He could hook directly into the ship's systems if he wanted to, but he preferred to use the console when there wasn't an emergency. Like many of his people, he still wasn't comfortable with the synthetic parts that were the legacy of Commander Shepard's fight against the machines who had once been called Reapers.

A breathtaking vista stretched out just beyond the ship's view port. Tuchanka was still a wasteland—forty years of careful rehabilitation hadn't changed that—but pockets of green were beginning to show up amidst the orange and browns of the desert. Dust storms were growing less and less frequent as the krogan turned their attention away from killing each other (and everyone else) to more constructive pursuits like farming and forestry. Zaal was never going to love krogan architecture—too many self-indulgent statues and unnecessary spires—but he had to admit that the planet had a certain rugged appeal.

"_Counselor Aral only wishes to see you succeed in whatever endeavors you choose to undertake, Zaal."_

Zaal winced; Quelb hadn't called him by his birth name since they both had climbed aboard the _Treno._ Hearing it uttered in that grim mechanical voice almost sent him teetering back into his childhood, but he mastered his embarrassment. "He wants me to stay on the home world and grow crops for a living, you mean. Maybe that's enough for him and Mother, but they both grew up on ships. They love Rannoch. It's something new and interesting and beautiful to them. For me, it's just a big rock. Same as any other rock that orbits close enough to a star that it can support an atmosphere."

The varn didn't respond to that assertion, and the silence that followed made Zaal squirm worse than any verbal chastisement could have. It was several excruciatingly long minutes before Quelb spoke again.

"_You may be pleased to know that Urdnot Solus has entered the space port."_

All too happy to have a distraction from the awkward conversation, Zaal whooped gleefully and nearly toppled out of his chair.

"Don't get too excited," Tana said dryly, "knowing him, the big idiot probably stopped to admire the scenery."

Zaal waved that comment away with a sweep of his hand. "He wouldn't do that. When I talked to him over the extranet, he sounded just as excited to get going as we are."

"Hm." Tana clacked her beak noncommittally. "Maybe you're right. It's not like Tuchanka's much to look at, anyway."

"Easy for you to say," Zaal returned. "The Reapers never touched Turvess."

The raloi woman glared witheringly at him. "Aren't you the one who just got done saying he doesn't care what dust ball he grew up on? And we're calling them "Redeemed" now, by the way. So what if my people buried their heads in the sand when the war started? Neither of us was even born yet when the whole mess happened. If you want to keep your skinny neck intact, don't test me again. Captain."

She spat the word out like she'd bitten into some spoiled greens. Zaal wasn't really offended. He was still trying to get used to the idea of being responsible for other people, even if it was just his own circle of close friends. How could he be expected to care for the needs of an entire crew?

His eyes fell on the little projection of Sol's image that hovered somewhere near Zaal's elbow. "I don't believe it. He really is just standing there!"

He wasn't looking at Tana, but he was sure she was giving him an "I told you so" kind of look. Before Zaal could decide if he was going to wait and fume some more or go out and drag that lump of krogan muscle onto the ship, he saw Sol stagger back a step and hunch forward like he was in pain. Zaal knew what was happening even before the ship's alarms sounded. He leaped to his feet and brushed roughly past Tana. "He's being attacked! Quelb, quick, open the hatch so he can get inside!"

"_As you say, Captain."_

"If his fat ass will even fit," Tana muttered.

"_I assure you, the_ Treno's _cargo port has more than adequate clearance to accommodate the width of Solus's posterior, Doctor Habaq. You need not worry."_

A cocktail of stress chemicals was flooding through his veins, but Zaal grinned behind his rebreather anyway. It was impossible to tell if Quelb was being sarcastic or not. He'd certainly taken Tana down a peg though.

The _Treno_ wasn't a long ship, so it didn't take much time for Zaal to run from fore to aft. He made it to the opening hatch in time to see Sol pounding up the runway, assault rifle swinging back and forth as he moved. There was a tiny asari chasing after the big krogan. By the biotic glow around her body and the long, slender sword she carried, she meant business.

The absurdity of the size disparity wasn't lost on Zaal, but he didn't have time to contemplate it properly. He knelt at the edge of the hatch, unslung his Kurchali from its holster at his waist, and swung it up onto his shoulder. After a split second to aim the rifle, he fired a round across Sol's shoulder at the spot where he thought the assassin would be.

She was there, but she also wasn't. Zaal definitely saw a blue body appear within the path of his shot. When he started to relax, the air around the asari's body flickered and she seemed to vanish. Zaal's shot impacted the runway uselessly, leaving a huge burn mark while utterly failing to do any damage to Sol's assailant. Zaal's nearly dropped his gun; he'd never seen anything like what the asari had done.

"Step aside, neophyte."

Tana came up alongside Zaal and focused her sharp eyes on Sol and his pursuer. Sol was close to the ramp, but not close enough. Any moment the asari would catch up to him, and somehow Zaal didn't think krogan body armor would stand up to the edge of that sword blade.

"Shoot her if I miss," Tana murmured nonchalantly. Green energy suffused her feathers as she leaned forward and dropped out of the hatch. Unfurling her wings, she shot through the air and vanished. There was no haze like the one that had marked the asari's biotic display. Tana was simply in one place one moment, and in the next she was crouched on the runway with her claws embedded in the asari's skull. Before Zaal could call out to stop her, she slammed her victim's head down three times hard against the pavement.

Sol made it up the ramp and into the hatch. He paused there for few moments, panting. Then he turned around and inspected Tana's handiwork from afar.

"Damn. Woman can cook and she can kill. Should have been a krogan!"

Zaal slapped hand to his forehead and tried not to think about all the extra work a dead asari assassin was going to make for him in the days to come.

* * *

><p>Codex<p>

Urdnot Solus: The oldest son of clan chief Urdnot Wrex and the former female shaman, Bakara. The implants granted him by Synthesis have made him into the most powerful biotic in his clan, perhaps among all his people. His childhood was shaped primarily by his mother, as he did not meet his father until he was already almost forty years old. As a result, he appears unusually withdrawn and self-possessed for a male of his species. This has caused him some difficulty among his peers, but his powerful biotics and great skill with firearms have won him their respect. His friendship with the infamous krogan hero Urdnot Grunt goes a long way toward shielding him from censure.

In accordance with the Rule of Ten, Sol has exactly nine siblings: three brothers and six sisters. Most of these are only related to him through his mother, with the notable exception of his youngest sisters, Ramira and Teth, who were conceived after Wrex's long journey home from Earth.

Zaal'Zorah vas Treno: Formerly a resident of the city of Rayya on the quarian homeworld, Zaal has since emigrated to Tuchanka, where he uses his technological expertise to assist his good friend, Sol, in his endeavors. He dreams of one day locating the human hero Shepard and the wreckage of the Citadel. He is the middle child of three born to Tali'Zorah nar Rayya and Aral'Dar vas Qwib Qwib.

Tana Habaq: A young raloi woman with a doctorate in exohorticulture, Tana is the _Treno_'s resident cook and biologist. An expert in growing crops of various types in unusual conditions, she has spent the last few years of her life exploring the special radiation-resistant gardens of Tuchanka.

Quelb: Once a Geth Prime unit, Quelb has spent the past forty years learning about quarian culture and helping to rebuild the civilization that once flourished on Rannoch. While assisting with a quarian construction project, he became acquainted with Tali'Zorah nar Rayya and befriended her son Zaal. Experienced and intelligent, Quelb agreed to accompany Zaal on the mission to the Sol system so he could keep an eye on the young quarian.

Kurchali: An unusual sniper rifle of quarian design, the Kurchali is significantly smaller than many of its Alliance counterparts while maintaining a similar level of firing power.


	2. Observer

**A/N: I'm pleased to hear you enjoyed the Codex portion, shadowmythic. It was a tossup on whether or not I was going to include it, but now I'm glad I did. Thank you for your review, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter!**

**To those of you who have added my story to your favorites and alerts, I'm very happy to see such a positive response! I know it can be hard to get attached to an all-new set of characters, but I hope you'll stick with it. The Mass Effect trilogy is really dear to me, and I'm doing my best to preserve the flavor.**

* * *

><p>Chapter Two: Observer<p>

Tana's handiwork didn't go unnoticed. She was rather gratified actually. While many of the galaxy's races looked the other way when someone committed an act of violence in their midst (batarians and salarians were especially guilty of such cowardice), the krogan people really knew how to appreciate a gruesome scene. They came out in droves to watch spectacular displays of violence and never failed to enjoy them. It wasn't that Tana liked killing precisely—in fact she thought it was a tremendous waste of her time and her energy. Yet if the necessity arose, she wanted her efforts to be recognized. After all, she'd be hours preening her feathers to get all that disgusting blue blood off of them. So unsightly.

Her young quarian acquaintance was less pleased than their krogan hosts. Oh he was properly grateful that Tana had saved his friend, though he didn't grovel nearly as much as he should have. He gabbled something at Tana about regulations and launch protocols and murder investigations. She pretended to listen, but as it so often was when it came to Zaal, the words dribbled against Tana's gray-and-brown plumage without achieving any real purchase. Zaal wasn't quite the most tongue-tied quarian Tana had ever encountered, but he certainly came close.

When an hour had passed and she'd explained her exploits to five different petty officials and at least one soldier, the afterglow of the hunt quickly wore off. Tana wanted to get away from all the unpleasant, gravelly krogan voices and back to the calm retreat of her lab onboard the _Treno_ so she could get a proper washing. To this end, she snapped her beak shut and refused to speak to anyone else, preferring to let her young captain navigate the maze of state observers and nosey bystanders. Curiously, Zaal's tendency toward buffoonery vanished almost entirely when he thought Tana wasn't looking. Sometimes he even managed something approaching true competence. This was the only reason Tana had agreed to accompany the boy on a journey of such unnecessary length and nebulous intent. When he contrived to get his act together, Zaal was an effective negotiator and passable leader.

Zaal's capabilities were really beside the point. Tana had only one motive in what amounted to a rather futile pursuit. She wanted to observe the most powerful krogan biotic in recorded history as closely as possible. There were plenty of outstanding asari with excellent control of the necessary mass effect fields, but none had ever possessed the raw strength that Solus displayed.

"I've seen him tear a veren apart with his mind," Zaal had confessed one night during the seemingly interminable journey from Turvess to Tuchanka. "It was rabid, and it probably didn't feel anything, but still. That's a horrible way to go."

Privately Tana agreed, though of course she preferred not to let Zaal know this. The captain saw Tana as an intelligent yet wild companion who would just as soon savage him as aid him. Tana allowed this delusion to persist. It often suited her to appear less sophisticated than she actually was. If her enemies chose to mistakenly believe she was nothing more than a talking beast, she'd be happy to take advantage of their stupidity.

"Tana?"

Zaal's voice had that irritating quaver in it again. Tana considered cuffing him with the side of her wing to knock some sense into him. Deciding that the gesture would do more harm than good, she came back over and glanced at the krogan functionaries who'd spent so much time hounding her. "Are they going to let us off planet sometime in the next year? If they're planning on tossing me into whatever passes for a jail around here, they'd better get on with it. All this waiting is getting tiresome."

Zaal smiled weakly. "No, I think I managed to keep you out of prison for now. If you'd killed a krogan it might've been a different story, but as things are it looks like we won't even get a fine. Might have trouble docking when we come back home, but that's a problem for another day." He looked seriously up at her. "You should thank Sol. He spoke for you when that investigator wanted to pull you in for interrogation."

"Hmph. I don't owe him anything. I saved his life, worthless though it might be."

"All the same, I'd appreciate it if you'd have a talk with him later. Even if it is just to growl at him like you usually do."

Feeling a little miffed, Tana followed Zaal up the runway and into the belly of the ship. It was pleasant to be away from all those gawkers, yet she couldn't help feeling vaguely dissatisfied. She had been looking forward to the prospect of having the object of her curiosity indebted to her.

Zaal led the way to the ship's small medical bay. They found Quelb standing there, his massive, red-tinted frame bent down over the operating table where Sol lay looking none too pleased. Half again the size of his krogan patient, the varn seemed far too large to fit into such a confined space. Tana worried that the strange creature might accidentally injure Sol.

As it turned out, her misgivings were entirely baseless. Quelb extracted the weapon from Sol's torso with practiced skill and patched up the wound with equal efficiency. It was strange to see a former synthetic using medigel, but there was no denying that Quelb knew what he was doing.

Sol lifted his head when he saw Zaal and Tana enter the room. "So they decided not to feed you to the veren after all. That's what they do to prisoners here you know. We like to watch 'em squirm."

"Do not be alarmed, Doctor," Quelb said in what he must have thought was a reassuring tone. "I believe that Solus is not being serious. It is likely that you were never in any danger."

The varn pressed Sol's head gently down against the operating table and continued his work.

"I'm so touched by your concern!" Tana replied drolly. She waited a moment to see if Quelb would react to the sarcasm, but he just went on doing what he had been. Tana sighed. She still couldn't tell if the varn was ignoring her or if he simply didn't understand that she was poking fun at him.

"So Sol," Zaal came up from behind Tana. She thought he looked uncharacteristically aggressive with his shoulders thrust forward and his head bent down slightly toward the floor. "What the hell was that out there?"

Tana was impressed that the captain had managed to keep such questions in check for as long as he had. Now that they were safely onboard the ship again, he evidently thought it was time to flay some answers out of the krogan. "That woman was trying to kill you!"

Sol shrugged and winced as Quelb swatted him lightly on his plates. "Keep your suit on, Zaal. s'Not like no one's ever had a go at me before. Dad's practically got his attempted murders on a schedule now."

"Your dad's never tried to stick you with a yard of sharp metal!" Zaal paused dubiously. "Has he?"

"Not that I remember. Wouldn't put it past him though." Sol cut off with a grunt and thrashed around for a moment. "Quelb! Watch where you stick those cold metal fingers!"

"My apologies. It is difficult to perform first aid when the patient is unruly and impatient. Perhaps if you were to remain still and submit to my care, you might find the experience less distressing."

"You know," Tana said musingly, "if Wrex really wanted to put you down, I think he already would have."

Sol laughed dismissively. "I'd like to see him try! He's so fat he can't even hoist a gun any higher than his knees."

Quelb administered another admonishing rap to Sol's plates. "While it is true that your father has not taken up arms in recent years, he remains in excellent physical condition for a krogan of his age. Considering his pivotal role in altering modern history—and in your own conception—you would do well to show him a more adequate measure of respect."

"You sound like my mother," Sol grumped. He brushed Quelb's hands out of the way and looked over to Zaal. "Remind me again why you wanted to bring this bucket of bolts with us?"

"Other than to patch you up when you get into scrapes like the one Tana just pulled you out of?" Zaal tilted his head to one side like he was thinking deeply. "Quelb's an amazing engineer. He can run through a thousand processes in the time it takes you to pick your nose. He knows liveships, too. When the _Treno_ blows an EEZO converter, Quelb is the one who's going to fix it. Unless you spent the last forty years learning everything there is to know about quarian engineering too."

Quelb leaned down a last time so he could finish sealing off Sol's wound. Then he stood back and gestured for the krogan to get up from the table. "You may replace your armor now. Also, Captain, while I appreciate your positive appraisal of my capabilities, I think we would be better served by trying to discover who or what originated the attack on Solus's person."

"I might be able to help with that," Tana put in. "Were you able to salvage any shavings from the knife's point of entry?"

Sol looked a bit put out to have his near-death experience discussed so casually in front of him, but Tana and Quelb both ignored him.

"Several," Quelb replied, "most too small to be useful for analysis." He reached out to a nearby shelf and pulled over a set of tiny metal bits enclosed by an equally small glowing, cube-shaped orange field. "The alloy used to craft the knife was extremely hard and dense. If the sword the assassin carried was crafted from the same metal, I suspect that she would not have been able to wield it unaided. Asari do not possess sufficient upper arm strength."

Zaal snorted. When the others all looked at him, he shook his head ruefully. "I'm sorry. Just—try telling an asari with a krogan father that. She'll probably break your face."

"I was merely conjecturing based on the data available to me, Captain. The asari who attacked Sol should not have been able to lift her weapon. Certainly she would not have had the capacity to swing it."

Tana decided it was time to intervene. She came over to inspect the object that lay couched in Quelb's strange metallic digits. Six minute pieces of some dark metal were scattered across the bottom of Quelb's cube, none larger than the tip of one of Tana's talons. "May I?" she asked, pointing a single claw at the cube.

"Of course, Doctor."

She stared at the metal for nearly a minute. Once she was satisfied that the shavings confirmed her suspicions, she explained. "Quelb's right. I've seen this kind of blade before. Ordinarily it's too heavy to use in a fight. You use biotics to suspend part of the sword's weight until you make contact with your opponent. Then you let the extra momentum carry the edge through their armor, or barrier, or whatever. We have something like it on Turvess, but we prefer axes. That assassin must have been a nasty piece of work. You have to train for years to cultivate the kind of discipline it takes to manage the fields. Congrats Sol. Someone's really got it in for you."

"Well we're sure as hell not doing anything about it standing around here," Sol replied gruffly. "Let's get off Tuchanka before Dad finds out we're leaving. If somebody tells him I got my ass kicked, he'll never let me out of his sight again."

"Doctor T'soni will want to be informed of the threat to Sol's life," Quelb suggested.

"Then our first stop should be Thessia," Zaal agreed. "I want to check in with Liara as soon as possible. Without her help, I'd still be stuck back on Rannoch, and this mission would be nothing more than a daydream."

Tana nearly snorted impolitely at the notion that this field trip was anything like a "mission." She didn't have the heart to tell the boy that this wonderful asari he was so enamored of would just have found someone else if Zaal wasn't available. Still, Sol had been attacked, and it wasn't impossible that this T'soni woman was behind the hunter. If she was, then Tana fully intended to end the threat upon the first opportunity that arose.

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><p>Codex<p>

Doctor Liara T'soni: Still young by asari standards, Liara had little difficulty adjusting to the changes brought by Synthesis. Being able to interface directly with her equipment has only made her more effective in her capacity as Shadow Broker. She now resides on a modest vessel in asari space along with her aging friend Feron.

Biotic melee weapons: Rare, deadly creations almost totally unique to the asari (and to a limited extent, the raloi), biotic weapons are often much heavier than standard arms. Talented biotics can train to use mass effect fields to propel these weapons in hand-to-hand combat for vastly increased damage to their targets.

Raloi preening habits: Turvess culture is obscure to most in the galaxy, but like many avians, the raloi have a pronounced tendency toward fastidiousness. Their preening customs are complex and nearly impossible for an outsider to understand. The gesture is often quite casual, exchanged between acquaintances and friends, but preening can also be extremely intimate.


	3. Connoisseur

**A/N: Thanks so much for your reviews, all. My responses got pretty lengthy, so I've placed them after the end of the new Codex entries for this chapter.**

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><p>Chapter Three: Connoisseur<p>

Quelb was looking forward to seeing Thessia. Although it still bore the scars left by the Reaper War, the asari home world remained the center of culture and intellectual development for the entire known galaxy. Most of the art and music was too stuffy and rigid to appeal to Quelb's tastes, but asari work was the bar by which most experts judged creative endeavors. If Quelb wanted grounding in all matters esoteric, it made sense for him to start his journey on Thessia. That he and the rest of the Treno's small crew would be staying for only a few days made little difference. Quelb could absorb a great deal of information at a glance and then store it for later, more leisurely examination. He might even share some of what he learned with his fellow varn.

The remnants of the former geth collective repository contained almost no first-hand experience pertaining to Thessia. The few platforms that had managed to penetrate asari security had not lasted long beyond landing planet-side. In the past, asari had never tolerated anything remotely resembling synthetic life, and so the geth stood out no matter how they attempted to disguise themselves. It was rather thrilling for Quelb to be standing comfortably in the engine core of a quarian liveship while he waited for clearance through docking procedures along with his primarily organic crew mates. Aside from some vague apprehension concerning how his arrival would be received—most asari still extant had been alive during the lesser confrontations between organics and synthetics that preceded the war—Quelb felt only a mild sense of anticipation. Thessia would be interesting, though hopefully not so interesting as it might have been for the geth Quelb resembled.

"_How's the ship running Quelb? Did we lose anything when we went through the relay?"_

The captain's voice summoned Quelb instantly out of his reverie. He addressed several queries to the Treno's systems before replying, "I detect no irregularities, Captain. We appear to have completed the jump without further mishap."

He laid a hand down on the console directly before the ship's EEZO core. If he had been of human or asari derivation, he would have smiled fondly. With its powerful engine and generously proportioned biosphere, the Treno was equipped not only to meet the needs of a crew of up to fifteen, but also to out-fly most other ships of its generation. Almost ten years had passed since the model's original design, but it had held up well. Quelb judged that the ship would be viable for space travel for at least another decade.

"_That's good to hear. Why don't you come up here and join us? I doubt we'll run into any trouble cooling our heels in orbit here. You've got to be bored out of your mind down there."_

"Thank you, Captain. I believe I will join you."

He set all of the ship's critical systems to warn him if there was a problem. The chances were extremely low that any truly acute difficulties would arise before they landed, but Quelb preferred to be prepared. Once he felt satisfied that he would know if anything went wrong, he turned away from the core and headed out toward the lift that would carry him up to the top level of the ship.

"Not for the first time," he observed aloud as he ducked under a thick knot of low-hanging wires, "I find that I am considering the purchase of a smaller, more agile platform."

He heard Solus chuckle coarsely over the comm system. _"Yeah, I don't think anybody had Primes in mind when they built these things."_

"_Mother did offer to find you something less—uh—intimidating. She said you always turned her down."_

Quelb nodded as he stepped into the lift, though he was aware that none of the other crew members would be able to perceive the gesture. "Tali'Zorah has always been quite generous, yes. I think I preferred not to be indebted to her for the same reasons that prevented you from accepting a loan from your father."

"_You didn't want anything tying you down." _Solus sounded speculative. _"I guess I can respect that."_

"I am fortunate to have your approval."

The lift only took a few moments to carry him from the third level for the ship up to the second. When he stepped out onto the command deck, Solus and Tana were there waiting for him. Zaal would of course be at the command console, guiding the ship until it made connection with a Thessian dock.

"Hey Bolts," Solus said by way of greeting. The area nearby the ship's primary exit hatch contained several cylindrical columns that supported the structure of the ship. Solus leaned against one of these with his arms folded one atop the other. Quelb's knowledge of krogan mannerisms suggested that this one was feeling anxious. Quelb could have easily checked the readings that Solus's armor routed automatically through the Treno, but he had found that most people considered this an invasion of privacy. Zaal allowed it only because he viewed Quelb as a close friend, or perhaps an uncle.

"Did our beloved Captain tell you where we're landing?" Tana inquired. Unlike Solus, the raloi woman appeared perfectly at ease, even a bit bored. She adjusted one of the sheathes she wore over her talons without looking up.

"As was described in the pre-jump memo, we will be seeking dry dock at the Thessian port town of Caldaris. Did you receive the missive? Perhaps I should run a diagnostic on our communications array while we wait."

"Relax," Solus interjected, "Tana's just giving you shit. We both got the memo. She's only getting pissy because Zaal didn't ask for her advice on where we should land."

Quelb "blinked" by briefly shuttering the lenses at the front of his head. He did so to emulate the human gesture and to show that he was confused. "Caldaris is the closest port to the capital with ground transport available to visitors who are not citizens of Thessia. It seems the most logical place for us to begin our search for Doctor T'soni."

"That's what I don't understand." The look Tana directed at Solus boded ill for the krogan. "If this asari is supposed to be a friend of yours, why do we have to look for her at all? Why not just call her up and have her come out to meet us?"

"I just can't. It's complicated, all right?"

Past experience told Quelb that when Solus stuck his jaw out the way he did then, there would be no drawing any sensible discourse out of him. Tana, it seemed, was unaware of this fact.

"Complicated how exactly? I dealt with the one woman who came after you, but she was on her own back on Tuchanka, no support at all. Even I can't fend off an entire asari wet works team."

"You have surprising insight into asari paramilitary operations," Quelb noted. Tana seemed taken aback by the observation. She folded her wings tightly against her back and shook her head in negation.

"No, not really. I just think where Sol's mystery stalker sent one hunter, she might send more."

Quelb was about to inquire further when Zaal appeared in the hallway that led back to the helm. "We're here!"

There was no kinetic indication within the ship when the Thessian sky bridge sealed against the hatch, but Quelb knew when it happened anyway. There were some benefits to being constantly connected to the ship one was traveling in, though it could grow tiresome when Quelb was trying to enjoy an especially dense line of poetry and data from the ship's mass accelerator leaked over into his primary processes. The hatch opened and their small party crossed over to the dock. Quelb, of course, hardly fit through a tunnel made to accommodate passengers of asari stature, and he noted that Sol encountered some difficulty as well.

They had arrived at one of the port's least busy times—several hours after the evening meal but before midnight. As a result, the docks were mostly abandoned. Several asari workers carrying crates to a large cargo vessel slowed their progress to stare at the strange collection of aliens, but they seemed to lose interest when Quelb turned to look at them. They hurried onward, leaving the Treno's crew almost completely alone in the area.

"This is rather odd," Quelb said as his companions craned their necks around to observe the impressive paintings that adorned the walls of the docks. "I was given to understand that when new arrivals came to asari worlds, a greeting party would be sent to meet them."

"Guess we don't rate a welcome wagon," Sol replied with some heat. "Maybe we should make some noise. Wake the place up a bit."

Zaal looked pained. "Please don't. I spent most of the trip here trying to sort through legal jargon, and that was just krogan law. Some of the older asari here have minds like mazes; I don't even want to think about how complicated their justice system is. You all have got to keep out of trouble while we're here. Tana, I'm looking at you."

The biologist fluttered a wing negligently at this admonition. "I can take care of myself."

"I know. It's not your hide I'm worried about." Zaal took a few steps out away from the sky bridge. He turned and looked seriously at all three members of his crew in turn. "Look, I've been here before. The three of you might have met asari in the past, but it's different here on Thessia. Most of the asari you meet in space are Maidens. Here they're just as likely to be in one of their other phases, or between them. They tend to be a lot more—ah—outgoing when it comes to romance here."

Quelb was sure that if the captain had been able to show a blush beneath his envirosuit, he would have. Perhaps there was some history there. Quelb would ask about it at a later date, when Zaal was less prepared to resist the inquisition.

"What I'm trying to say is: be careful. That includes you, Quelb. I doubt you're going to get many invitations to have a late night romantic dinner with anyone. They still remember the geth here, and they haven't had four decades to get used to your people like the quarians have."

"Your concerns echo my own," Quelb assured his friend, "but you need not worry. My interest in this planet is purely academic. I will of course refrain from forming any serious emotional attachments while I am here."

"Sometimes I wonder if you actually hear me when I talk."

Zaal seemed perturbed for some reason.

"That is somewhat unkind of you, Captain. I am always careful to take your suggestions into account when making a decision. If I choose not to do as you advise, it will only be when I conclude that your reasoning is incorrect."

"Right. Well, I've said my piece. Let's just get to the hotel and settle in for the night."

Zaal headed toward the nearest mass transit station. Solus and Tana followed reluctantly while Quelb brought up the rear. He watched as the captain started to purchase passage for all four of them at a large terminal that had been built into the station for the purpose.

"Captain, please wait a moment. I will not be accompanying you to your lodgings."

"Why not?"

"Asari accommodations are suitable for many varieties of intelligent life; however they make no allowance for visitors of my particular species. They provide no power stations where I would be able to recharge. Also, in the vein of our earlier conversation, I believe that most of inhabitants of this world would find my presence disturbing. In anticipation of this difficulty, I have made arrangements to spend my time here with an acquaintance."

Zaal lifted his hands away from the console. "I didn't know you had friends on Thessia."

"Matriarch Talmana would be best described as a colleague rather than as a friend, but we have conversed a great deal via the extranet over the past few months. She has agreed to house my platform for the duration of our stay. The observatory where she works is located here in the outskirts of Caldaris, so I will remain within the vicinity of the ship in the event that we should need to make a hasty departure."

Sighing heavily, Zaal turned back to the console and completed his transaction. "That's probably for the best. Radio us if you have any problems, all right?"

"I will do so, though I anticipate no difficulty."

"We'll see."

Despite the late hour, or perhaps because of it, the dock shuttle arrived promptly once Zaal had paid all of the appropriate fees from the account he and his mother had set up for this expedition. Although Quelb did not know the exact amount of credits contained within that account, he suspected the number was a substantial one. He was rather proud of his young charge for putting it together in such a timely manner. Zaal still had yet to divulge the details of how he had acquired the funds, but Quelb had every reason to believe that the source was legitimate.

Vania Observatory wasn't in an ideal location. Even as far out as the docks, light pollution from the town's afterhours entertainment spoiled any decent view of the stars. It was a relic from another time, built back when the town was the primary docking station for some of the first asari space-worthy vessels. Talmana complained rather often about her situation, positioned as she was in a facility that was mostly defunct. Quelb had once pointed out that the matriarch's decorated career as a scientist should enable her to obtain work wherever she desired. Her response had been counterintuitive.

"This place might be a dump, but it's familiar. It's home. Wouldn't leave if I lived to be two thousand."

Quelb put it down to the folly of those whose minds were of purely organic origination.

When he arrived at the observatory's front entrance, the gate was open and locked into that position. He found this exceedingly strange. While Talmana often worked late into the night, she rarely received visitors and would likely close the gate behind them even if she did. Quelb approached cautiously, his sensors primed to pick up any hostile presence. He encountered no enemy gunman. Instead, there was an attractive young asari girl wearing a long, black coat waiting just inside the portal. She smiled at Quelb as he approached.

"You must be my grandmother's friend! She's been expecting you. I'm afraid she's stepped out for a moment, but she should be back soon. In the meantime, I'll be happy to help you get settled in. I'm Darza, by the way."

Quelb paused on the threshold. "Matriarch Talmana did not inform me that she had a granddaughter."

"She never mentioned me? I'm hurt! I'll have to give her a piece of my mind when she gets back. Go ahead and come inside though. It's a bit chilly out tonight, and you're letting in the cold air."

Still feeling uneasy, Quelb nonetheless found no reason not to acquiesce. He crossed into the observatory and felt his fears confirmed when the gate slammed shut behind him. He tried to contact Zaal, but his access to the extranet had already been blocked.

"You are not Talmana's grandchild," he accused. Darza winked saucily at him.

"No shit."

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><p>Codex<p>

Sky bridge: A narrow, retractable tunnel used by some space-faring vessels to allow passengers to exit to or board from ground docks and space stations.

Caldaris: A small port town with big-city charm, or so claims a popular Thessian travel brochure. In reality, Caldaris is a bit of a dump. Worn from too many years of its corrupt bureaucracy failing utterly to maintain the infrastructure, Caldaris might be impressive to visitors upon first glance, but closer observation reveals that the town's seams show all too well. Home to a thriving underground criminal population, Caldaris is the closest a traveler can get to Omega Station while still enjoying the comfortable bubble of Thessian politics and luxury.

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><p><strong>Review Responses:<strong>

**shadowmythic: As some of the others noted in their own reviews, the raloi are not a species I came up with. Although they never appear physically in the games, they are mentioned in some of the flavor text. I will take credit for my interpretation of their anatomy though.**

**jaass20: This is something I had to think about for a long time, and in the end I decided to go with "nar Rayya" instead of "vas Normandy" for reasons that would be a bit spoilery at this point, so I will not go into them just yet.**

**MAGIC ORANGEZ: You're in luck! Liara definitely has a part to play in this story. Thanks for your review, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story.**

**blackswirlycloakguy: I'm so glad everyone seems to like the raloi! I included Tana almost on a whim, but she fits in well and I'm pleased to have her. As for Tali/Garrus, well, there's a reason why they didn't end up together, but that is also a spoiler so I shall say no more. :X**

**Colonel-Mustard1990: I'm always happy to get critique, be it positive or negative. Please feel free to point out any errors you see, though hopefully they won't interfere with your enjoyment!**


	4. Preserver

Chapter Four: Preserver

There was no getting around it. Sol was being watched. At first he'd put it down to jumpiness after nearly losing his bacon back on Tuchanka. Thessia was a beautiful planet; urban, but without the devastation that still haunted his own home world. Sol could see evidence of the Reaper invasion when he looked closely enough. Here was a sky scraper that was just a shade too new, there a public park couched suspiciously in the middle of a manufacturing zone. There was also a surprising lack of blue in the cityscape. Maybe the asari got tired of it after a while.

These blue women were even more fanatical about keeping up their old temples than the krogan were about theirs, and Sol wouldn't have thought that was possible. He knew that the asari were very spiritual people, but did they really need a temple on every street corner?

Picking apart questionable city planning on the part of the asari only occupied him for a short time. He was sitting in a booth at a disreputable little bar in the working sector of Caldaris, and he was slowly going insane.

It wasn't that he really cared that a shot from a sniper rifle would rip right through the cheap, thin glass in the window beside him like it wasn't even there. Zaal was a hell of a marksman, and if he thought they were safe, then Sol didn't have anything to worry about. Here in the homeland, renegade asari assassins probably had a hard time moving around anyway.

He played around with the funny little asari eating utensils that had come with their meal while he waited for Zaal to finish grilling the nothing university researcher who was supposed to be their go-between. For a woman who claimed to be just an ordinary scientist, Liara T'soni was awfully hard to get hold of. It was maddening to be so close without being able to get in contact with her.

"…you sure you can't get us an appointment? Doctor T'soni said that if I was ever on Thessia, I should talk to you."

Zaal could really come on strong when he wanted to. He turned those weird glowing eyes on someone and suddenly that unfortunate was willing to give him whatever he wanted just to stop him from sounding so sad. It was a useful skill. Sol knew the trick worked because the damned pyjak had used it on him a few times before.

"You've made that quite clear, Captain," the asari replied smoothly, "but I'm afraid I still can't help you. Like you said, Liara and I worked on a few projects together back when we were in school together. It's been almost thirty years since I've heard from her though. I can't imagine why she would tell you to come to me."

Sol slid out of the booth—not an easy feat considering that the thing had been made for slender asari, not overgrown krogan in battle armor. "Anybody want a refill?"

Their contact smiled up at him and extended her glass in his direction. There was still a dribble of green liquid in the base of the tiny cup to hint at what she had been drinking. "Yes, please. Get one for you and your friend, too, on me. It's the least I can do after the two of you came all this way."

Sol growled appreciatively and took the cup. A few drinks would be just the thing to put a damper on his nerves.

When he got to the counter, he found a line about half a mile long. He could've pushed a few of the other patrons out of the way, but he wasn't particularly eager to get back to Zaal's interrogation. He leaned forward with his elbows on the bar and settled in to wait.

"_Sol, are you there? Can you hear me?"_

He blinked, and the bar and all its noise and press of unfamiliar bodies were gone, replaced by the hot, arid interior of a tent in Tuchankan high summer. Reality fuzzed for a moment, and then Liara T'soni was standing directly in front of him. Sol hadn't been lying when he told his younger sisters that this woman was beautiful. Her huge, lovely blue eyes on their own were enough to drive any thinking creature mad, and then there was still the rest of her.

"Well, this isn't the most appealing setting to conduct our meeting in, but if it makes you more comfortable, I'll just have to bear with it."

"Liara?" Sol looked wildly around the enclosed space. It really did look like home. It even smelled like the desert, dry, earth, and somehow clean. He could feel the sand crunching beneath his boots. "What did you do to me?"

Liara smiled benevolently and reached into one of the pockets of her white lab coat. "I opened a direct channel between us via the extranet. It took longer than usual for the virtual space to populate, probably because of your thick krogan skull, or because we're so far away from one another. My ship is capable of projecting a narrow beam that lets me cover the distance. I just need to have the proper equipment on the other side."

"That's why you told Zaal about your friend," Sol realized.

"Yes. This is Nalya's favorite bar, so I knew you would be likely to come here eventually. There are less cumbersome methods of communication, but I thought this conversation needed to take place face-to-face. So here we are."

"I guess. "Sol scratched to top of his head—this vision certainly felt real. "My brain's not going to leak out through my ears, is it?"

Liara laughed as she pulled a battered, old datapad out of her pocket. "Don't be silly. The geth spent centuries communicating this way, and it never did them any harm."

"You're not helping your case here lady."

"No? All right then, think of it this way. You're in danger, and this is the only safe way I can speak with you. Now I need you to listen to me before a commando squad shows up and takes you beyond my reach."

"Shit." Sol would have spat on the ground, but you didn't desecrate the earth under your tent, even if it was only in some weird tech dream. "I'm listening."

"Excellent." Liara handed him the datapad. "That contains coordinates to a comm buoy located near one of the planets in the Parnitha system. Take a moment to memorize them, because I'm going to destroy the data before we're done here."

Sol grudgingly did as he was told. "I take it you want us to go here then."

"That's correct. Have you got the coordinates?"

Sol nodded. Liara didn't do anything that he could tell, but the datapad in his hand disintegrated in a burst of orange light.

"Good. I wish I could be more candid with you Sol, but if the worst happens and you fall into hostile hands, I can't let you lead my enemies back to me. Please try to understand, I have my daughter's safety to consider."

"How is Janae?"

"She's a handful, rather like her father. You'll get to see her soon, I hope. Tell no one we've spoken until you're safely off world, all right? Not even Zaal."

The scene started to crumble away as Liara spoke. First the heat fled, then the familiar desert scents. Sol felt like he was losing his senses. "How am I supposed to get him to leave if I can't tell him why?"

Liara grinned reassuringly as her image faded out of Sol's mind. "You're a smart boy Sol. Get creative. Whatever you decide to do though, take care of Zaal. Tali would never forgive me if I let something happen to her eldest."

Then he was back in the bar with a frustrated bartender waving a blue hand in front of his face.

"Excuse me sir, but are you all right? Do I need to call you a cab?"

Sol shook off the remnants of the vision and pushed away from the bar. "Wha? No, I'm fine. Just a dizzy spell."

The bartender smirked wryly at him. "I didn't know krogan got those."

_We can when someone storms into our minds uninvited!_ "Never mind. Can I get a refill for my two friends over there by the window?"

"What, nothing for you?"

"I think I'll just take it easy for the rest of the night."

"That's too bad. "The bartender pursed her lips thoughtfully while she poured out a mug of Zaal's favorite beverage—a turian lager that reeked like fresh poison. "You know, I think you're the first krogan I've ever seen turn down a drink."

"Times are changing," Sol replied. "We don't murder each other for fun anymore either."

"Pity. I know a few politicians here on Thessia who could stand a bit of murdering. Hey, before, you go, what's that quarian look like under his suit?"

Sol rolled his eyes as he took Zaal's mug of pungent beer and the researcher's fancy cocktail. He promised to leave a generous tip. After all, he couldn't be sure the bartender had been joking about her potentially bloodthirsty nature. Somehow he didn't think he wanted that one chasing him down with a shotgun.

When he returned to the table, he wasn't surprised to see that Zaal still hadn't made any progress with their contact. Now that he knew why, Sol almost felt sorry for the poor little bastard. Zaal was doing some of his very best wheedling, and it was getting him exactly nowhere.

Nalya shot Sol a questioning glance when she saw that he'd returned without a drink of his own.

"Appreciate the hospitality," he told her truthfully, "I've just got a lot on my mind. Rather keep it clear for now, sorry."

Zaal seemed to know almost instantly that something had changed. That was another of his helpful captainy traits—knowing when there was interesting business to stick his nose into. He sipped away at his lager and continued to make conversation, but Sol could tell his friend's focus wasn't there anymore.

A server had cleared away their food, so Sol no longer had anything to keep his hands occupied. Wishing he'd had the foresight to order something to gnaw on while he was at the bar, he sat and tried to settle down while Zaal and Nalya chatted away. It was impossible. The booth seemed to have shrunk in his absence, and he kept banging his knees up against the bottom of the table. Finally he got up, nearly overturning the table as he went. "Going out for some air."

Then he stalked off and out through the front door.

The streets of Caldaris were pretty much like the buildings—too small and too crowded. The air was a little fresher outside though, and Sol felt less like someone was trying to cram him into a packet of field rations. He was also more exposed, and he felt it.

Zaal followed him out a few minutes later. Nalya came along with him to say farewell.

"If the two of you do see Liara, tell her to give me a call. I miss our late night talks."

Sol's innards shivered as the asari winked at him before slipping back into the bar.

"What do you think she—" Zaal began. Sol cut him off.

"We're not talking about it. Let's go track down the bird lady and your pet robot."

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><p>Codex<p>

Adaptive consensus: Technology that allows sentient creatures with compatible implants to communicate directly from mind-to-mind. Similar to the original geth consensus, such communication draws on the experiences of the participants to generate an artificial reality catered to the minds of each individual.

Janae T'soni: Liara T'soni's young daughter. Passionate and inquisitive, she takes an interest in nearly everything she sees, though she does not share her mother's love of archaeology. The exact details of her parentage are unknown.

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><p><strong>Review Responses:<strong>

**shadowmythic: Yeah, I like Sol too, though if I'm allowed to have a favorite, I'd have to go with Tana for now!**

**MAGIC ORANGEZ: The missions on Rannoch were my favorite part of ME3, so I really put a lot of thought into what I thought the geth would be like once they achieved self-actualization. Quelb is strange even for a varn though. X.x.;**

**Twisting Beliefs: The Reapers were still around at the end of the war, as well as the human-invented quantum entanglement devices. The shortest answer I can give you is that a massive team of scientists worked with the Nazara to reverse engineer one of the relays at the outer edge of the Catalyst explosion's range (where it did the least amount of damage).**

**Sailoramber: Writing Quelb is fun, even if it is a little exhausting (he's way smarter than I am). "Varn" is an abbreviation, but you'll see the full phrase come up later in the story. Guess you'll have to keep reading. D**


	5. Extraction

Chapter Five: Extraction

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><p>They found Tana standing beside a statue of a rather forbiddingly posed asari Justicar. Several times life size, the stone had clearly been lovingly sculpted by a master craftsman. Ordinarily Zaal would have taken the opportunity to examine the sculptor's work, but Sol was acting strangely, and that was rarely a good sign. Zaal wanted to figure out what was going on as quickly as possible.<p>

A trio of asari who were too young to have ever been off-world stood in a cluster several meters away from the tall raloi. Zaal wasn't sure what the children's interest in his crew mate was, and he didn't want to know. Brushing close by the girls to disperse their little group, he came up at an angel that kept him in Tana's line of vision.

"You're learning," she told him with one of her terrifying avian smiles.

"Yeah, well, when someone grabs you by the neck and shoves you up against a wall you learn to do as she says pretty fast."

"That or you don't live very long," Sol added helpfully.

"Thanks Sol. Really."

"Your inane banter can wait, boys," Tana said cuttingly. "Tell me what you're doing here. Have you found any leads on our asari friend, or do I need to go back to staring down Justicar Samara?"

Zaal peeked at the statue again. This time he recognized the strong, angular features of the woman his mother had often shown him in pictures from her past. "Is that her? I always thought she'd look older somehow."

"Your point, Captain?"

"Right. Sol and I didn't learn anything from our contact, so we came to find you and Quelb. I think we've been in Caldaris for long enough; the mercenaries I hired won't wait on Mars forever."

Tana shrugged, evidently not caring whether they made their rendezvous with the mercenaries or not. "Speaking of your metallic keeper, have you been able to raise him over the comms? I called him a few minutes ago to ask a question about asari mating habits. He still hasn't gotten back to me."

"Doesn't sound like Quelb," Sol opined. Zaal agreed with him.

"You're right, and now that I think about it, I haven't heard from him since last night." He tried connecting his suit to the varn's platform. Instead of the nearly instant connection he was accustomed to, he heard only meaningless static. "There's some kind of interference. I can't reach him."

Sol growled, and his eyes glowed blue with excess biotic energy. "Trouble then. Good. Been waiting to pound somebody into the pavement ever since we left home."

"It's a little early to assume anything," Tana said mildly. "Quelb's probably just jacked into a wall at that lab he went to visit."

"No chance. Any time Zaal wants something, Quelb's there to help. Little creepy now that I think about it."

Zaal was already headed off in the direction of Vania Observatory. He called up a map of the town on his omnitool so he wouldn't get lost. He would have run if he didn't think he would attract even more attention than he and Tana had already drawn just by being a quarian and a raloi in the company of a krogan. As it was, he almost plowed right over a family of human tourists while he wasn't looking. He called out an apology over his shoulder as he danced around the obstacle, though he would rather have punched one of them for getting in his way.

_Been spending too much time around Sol lately._

"Try calling that Matriarch friend of his," Sol suggested. He didn't have any trouble navigating the crowds. No pedestrian in his right mind would get in the way of a krogan who looked like he was on the war path.

Zaal searched swiftly through the Thessian World Directory. What should have taken seconds took him far longer because of the strange asari naming conventions he had to sift through. By the time he actually located Matriarch Talmana's signal, he and the others were practically on her doorstep anyway. He punched the number into his omnitool and rounded a corner just two blocks away from the observatory. A tiny hologram that depicted an elderly asari appeared just above his wrist.

"_You've reached the offices of Matriarch Talmana, such as they are,"_ the hologram intoned. Its voice was a gravelly, crunchy alto that grated on Zaal's ears. _"If you want to leave a message for some reason, go for it. Maybe I'll get back to you when I feel like it."_

"Quelb's friends with _that_?" Sol's emphasis on the last word left no doubt about what his first impression of the woman was. Shaking his head impatiently, Zaal dismissed the hologram and ducked down an alleyway that looked like it might be a promising shortcut. They had to cross over several puddles full of substances whose origin Zaal preferred not to contemplate, but when they came out on the other side, the observatory was right across the street from where they were standing.

"Hold on."

Tana's claws sank gently into the mesh that covered Zaal's left shoulder, anchoring him in place. She didn't apply enough pressure for her grip to actually hurt him. He just wasn't going anywhere until she'd had her say.

"Neither of them is responding to your calls. The Matriarch I can understand; you're nothing but a strange quarian to her, and judging by her answering machine message, I doubt she likes meeting new people. Quelb though—Sol was right. Quelb should have gotten back to you by now."

Zaal tried to break free, but he didn't want to do anything with those talons threatening to puncture his suit.

"I know you want to barge in there and rescue him from whatever's been keeping him, but we need to have a plan. That's the first rule of the hunt: don't rush in unprepared. Didn't your mother teach you?"

Tana stopped speaking when they all heard the discharge of a heavy weapon from inside the observatory. Zaal broke free of her grasp and dashed across the street. A car was flying low as its driver searched for a parking spot; Zaal dodged around it and glanced through one of the windows in the observatory façade. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary in the lobby that he could see. Finding the front gate sealed shut; he pulled up his omnitool again and started hacking the gate's locking mechanism.

"That'll take too long."

Sol came up on Zaal's right and brushed him out of the way. Zaal plastered his body against the side of the building as his friend spent a split second summoning his biotics and then released them in a roiling mass at the closed gate. Built mainly to keep out petty thieves and vagrants, the shoddy barrier crumpled inward under the force of Sol's blast. He stormed into the observatory with Zaal following close behind.

"A frontal assault it is," Tana muttered darkly. Zaal could tell she was behind him by the sharp clicking noise her talons made as she picked her way through the debris left by Sol's attack.

They passed unchallenged through the dilapidated atrium and on into the high, domed chamber that was the main body of the observatory. Zaal still couldn't see Quelb, but it wasn't difficult to tell where the varn was. There was an asari standing on the floor in the rough center of the planetarium with the barrel of a plasma cannon pointed at a slipshod wall of overturned packing crates.

_She knew we were coming, _Zaal realized with rising horror. _No one carries plasma weapons here on Thessia! None of the asari have enough synthetic parts for them to work!_

He pushed the analytical side of his mind out of the way in favor of the part that knew how to make an enemy's weapon overheat. Threads of code blazed through his mind while he frantically tried to get his omnitool to talk to the plasma cannon before its owner decided to fire.

Sol hurtled past him, biotics amped up to full. The krogan's armor crackled with blue energy as he launched a shredding warp field at the asari. The attack slammed into her barrier and adhered there, licking hungrily away at the wall of energy that insulated her body. The attack didn't stop her from firing off a bright beam of plasma. The shot burned a brilliant white as it snapped from the barrel of the cannon across to the wall directly to the left of the crate barricade. The asari flinched as she instinctively tried to get away from Sol's assault, but the warp stuck tenaciously to her barrier and refused to let go. Grimacing, she took one hand off of her weapon and used it to focus a localized singularity. Zaal watched incredulously as the singularity enveloped the glowing orb of Sol's warp and crushed it into nothingness.

"Krogan biotics," she said in a tone that suggested she'd have spit if she was less ladylike, "still so unsophisticated." She turned the cannon so it was oriented on Sol. "This is for Tirsi, you brute!"

She pulled the trigger—and the cannon emitted a high-pitched whine of protest. Sparks lanced up the barrel and snapped against the sleeve of the asari's sturdy black coat. Zaal allowed himself a grin as the asari cursed and hurled the cannon to the ground. He'd finished his hack just in time to keep Sol from being incinerated.

His gloating session was short-lived. The asari whirled and launched a huge biotic blast of her own at him. Zaal saw the woman's coat tail flare out dramatically behind her, but he had no time to get out of the way. At this close range, all he could do was throw up his hands and hope that his suit's shields could take the hit.

A quarter of a second passed, and then Tana was there beside him. Lashing out with one massive wing, she knocked him out of the path of the biotic storm and took the hit herself. Zaal cried out wordlessly as he saw the raloi's green barrier flash briefly into existence only to shatter as the blow meant for Zaal destroyed it. Tana fell to her knees with both wings splayed out in front of her.

"Sol, keep her pinned down!" Zaal shouted, pointing at the asari. He was wasting his breath, really. Now that the threat of the cannon was gone, Sol closed into melee range and launched a flurry of biotics-infused punches at the asari. Zaal rolled to his feet and went over to the spot where Tana still lay prone.

"I'm all right," she informed him irritably. He could see it wasn't true. Some of the tough outermost feathers on her right wing had been ripped away by the asari's biotics, and Tana twitched every few moments as the pain registered.

"I've never used medigel on a raloi before," Zaal confessed. He was about to try anyway, but Tana shook her head violently back and forth.

"Don't. If you close off those wounds, my feathers will never grow back. I'll be ground-bound."

Horrified, Zaal snatched his arm back and lost half his supply of medigel in a useless pile of glop that fell to the floor.

"I can handle the pain," Tana told him. "Go and get Quelb while you still can."

Zaal looked over his shoulder. Sol was still brawling with the asari, but he'd lost his momentum. In close quarters with an agile opponent, all his extra mass was more hindrance than help.

Zaal didn't like leaving Tana unprotected—or Sol without backup—but he only had seconds to make his choice. Wrenching his eyes away from the melee, he made a break for the stack of crates. His stealth generator came online with a little mental nudge, and he judged that he had just enough time to cross the distance before his suit lost its charge. When he was halfway there, a stray blast from Sol's fight impacted the ground right in front of him, but he didn't stop. He rolled behind the jumble of crates just as his cloak fizzled out of existence.

His breath caught when he saw Quelb, or rather what remained of him. All of the varn's parts seemed to be present and connected, but there were black scorch marks across most of his body. The myriad lights that usually indicated life were all dark except for one of Quelb's secondary view ports. A blue spark flickered there like light reflecting erratically off of an eye. Zaal settled down beside his old friend and got to work setting up a manual connection between them. Using his omnitool and some spare wiring he always carried in case he needed to make spot repairs on his suit, he managed to jury-rig a very basic communications interface. With it, he was able to touch Quelb's mind directly.

He was relieved to find that there was still plenty there to touch. Quelb's mind was a confusing morass of both autonomous thought and rigid programmed code in equal measure. After a few moments of work, he was able to firm up the connection, and an image floated up out of Quelb's memories.

The image was of Zaal's mother when she'd been young. She still wore her exosuit, and she was seated at the edge of a cliff with her knees drawn up under her chin. There was someone with her, a human man in Alliance armor. They were watching a Rannoch sunset together, so both of them were silhouetted by the strong light and it was difficult to make out any details. Before Zaal could examine the memory more closely, he felt a gentle push from Quelb's side of the connection.

"_Some experiences are not meant to be shared, Zaal."_

Quelb didn't sound angry, just sad and maybe a bit wistful. Zaal jerked back guiltily.

"_Sorry Quelb. You looked pretty far gone, and I figured this was the only way to get in contact with you. What happened here?"_

"_A young asari Maiden calling herself Darza lured me here under false pretenses. I do not know the current whereabouts of Matriarch Talmana; however it seems that she has been away long enough for Darza to acquire her identity and then to use it to pursue an acquaintance with me. As soon as I entered the observatory, she cut me off from the extranet by means of a device whose nature I still do not comprehend. It even managed to obfuscate the personal link I share with you, and I did not think that was possible."_

"_She did this to you, didn't she?"_ Zaal's eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched so hard that it bumped up against the inside of his mask.

"_I attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution with her. She appeared receptive to such an arrangement, but it seems she was merely biding her time until she found an opportunity to destroy my platform."_

"_Are you all right?"_

"_While I regret the loss of my organic components, I have managed to salvage all of my memories and the greater portion of my personality. If you allow it, I will upload my consciousness into your suit and continue my existence."_

"_Of course, Quelb. Go ahead."_

"_Thank you. The process will only take a moment."_

The flickering spark faded from Quelb's view port, and for a second Zaal thought his friend was gone. Then he heard Quelb's voice come in through his suit's internal audio.

"_Hm. This is not an ideal situation, but I believe I will survive. Now, I presume that Solus and Tana are not absent because they are off carousing in the city. I suggest that we go and assist them."_

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><p>Codex<p>

Justicar Samara: An asari war hero, Samara perished in the final push against the Reapers who invaded the human home world. Her legacy lives on in her daughter Falere, now the proprietor of a new Ardat-Yakshi monastery. Many statues have been erected in asari space to depict the Justicar's heroism, and Samara's complicated life story has been the subject of many holovids and not a few musical theater productions.

Vania Observatory: One of the oldest asari scientific strongholds still in operation, this aging facility has seen the launch of Thessian satellites. For years it provided an endless source of wonder for young asari children, though in recent times it has fallen into disuse. Its manager, Matriarch Talmana, is a cantankerous old astronomer who spends more of her time drinking than in maintaining the observatory premises.

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><p><strong>Review Responses<strong>

M4GIC OR4NGEZ: I just noticed the 4's in your name, sorry! I'm afraid I've read way too my l33t in my time, so I tend to just read it as normal text nowadays. I'm glad to hear that you found the plot suitably thick though!

jaass20: Microsoft Word insists on trying to capitalize your name. Sadly, I am unable to chastise it properly. Also, how do you know Janae is Shepard's daughter? :furtive look: Liara never specified!

shadowmythic: Thanks for sticking with me SM! The adaptive consensus is a new technology that Liara developed, and it works for any species. It's just not too widespread yet because she's being tightfisted with it in true Shadow Broker fashion.

Twisting Beliefs: This relay problem was one of the main issues I struggled with when I came up with the idea for this story, but it may be worth explaining that in my version it did take about twenty years for the various fleets to get home, longer for the krogan since they didn't have their own ships. That's why Sol didn't know his father until recently, and it's also why no one's ever gone looking for the missing Citadel before now. As for the Reapers still hanging around, I'm not sure I concur with your interpretation of the ending, but I'm replaying the game, so I'll keep an eye out when I watch the final events play out again.

Jonnoda: Thanks very much for your kind words! I think Mary Sue's can have their place (humor mostly), but I don't like them in my stories. I prefer to write characters who are properly flawed. I like to think that makes them more interesting.


	6. Interloper

Chapter Six: Interloper

Tana didn't regret telling Zaal to help Quelb, but she could see that Sol was in a fight for his life. Unlike many of the krogan Tana had encountered, Sol didn't fight like a berserker. Every move he made was an act of calculated violence. Ordinarily this style of fighting would have served him well, but he was going up against an opponent who fought like an amoeba. The asari flowed around every punch Sol directed her way and used even the slightest opening granted her to land sharp, quick blows that chipped away at Sol's stamina. Then she bounced out of the way and forced him to use up more energy closing the gap. In a way, Tana approved. The asari was using the finest trap an experienced fighter could use on a less seasoned opponent: wearing him down while conserving her own strength.

While she admired the asari's tactics, Tana couldn't let her kill the most interesting creature she'd ever encountered in her lifetime. She bided her time, waiting for Sol to get lucky and land a solid hit. Her chance came when the asari danced backward from a spray of rounds from Sol's rifle. While the woman was distracted, he launched her own cannon at her with a quick-and-dirty application of biotics. Too massive and slow-moving to be stopped by her barrier, the weapon slammed into her back and knocked her forward a few steps. Tana shoved the pain in her wing away as she pulled up her hand gun and willed the special ammunition inside the chamber to full potency.

Taking careful hold of the grip and trigger, she quickly aimed and emptied the clip into the spot where the asari stood recovering from Sol's attack. The biotic ammunition did its work well, ripping through the asari's defensive barrier so that it popped like a pricked bubble. Seeing the opening in the asari's guard, Sol formed a biotic field around her and hurled her across the room. Her body smashed into a scale model of a Thessian moon, and she did not rise from the pile of crumpled metal. Sol started to charge after her, ready to perform the coup de grace if necessary.

Zaal—stupid fledgling that he was—Zaal interposed his body between Sol and his target. Through a supreme effort of will, Sol managed not to bash his friend's skull in, but Tana thought it was a very near miss. Zaal was fortunate that Sol was somewhat more evolved than most of his people. Any other krogan would have run a meddling quarian down if the idiot creature got in his way.

"Sorry Sol," Zaal said contritely. "I can't let you mangle the woman who might be our only lead."

Sol opened his mouth like he had something he wanted to say, but he must have thought better of it, because nothing came out. Zaal pulled out a pair of linked metal rings that vaguely resembled a portable torture device from more primitive times. He used these rings to secure the unconscious asari's arms behind her back.

Even though she was still fighting off the agony in her wing, Tana nodded approvingly. She would have disabled the asari's legs as well, but maybe that wasn't necessary. Raloi often used their legs to manipulate biotic fields—it was part of their basic aerial combat training—but Tana's experience with biotics from the various other bipedal races had shown that they used their hands almost exclusively.

"Where's Quelb?" Sol asked gruffly.

"_I have taken refuge within the processors inside the captain's suit," _Quelb replied. His voice was the same, but it came from the speakers built into Zaal's suit. Since Tana could not see the quarian's face, it seemed to her that Quelb had occupied his friend's body. The effect was distinctly eerie.

"You can still do that?" Sol sounded almost as surprised as Tana was.

"_Evidently so. I am somewhat diminished, but I expect that I will return to full capacity once I locate a new mobile platform."_

"You mean after we help you find one," Zaal interjected. Tana shivered, still finding the seeming mixture of two personalities into one body extremely disquieting.

"_A specious distinction, Captain, but yes. Regardless, we must return to the _Treno _as quickly as possible. I do not think it is wise for us to remain on Thessia any longer than we must."_

Zaal turned to look at Tana, and she had the uneasy feeling that two sets of eyes were gazing out at her from behind the mask. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"Let's just get back to the ship," she replied. "I've got some painkillers back in my cabin, and those should help a bit."

She got unsteadily to her feet and clacked her beak at Sol when he hovered solicitously beside her. "You're not my nanny, so just back off."

Sol grinned at her in an incredibly infuriating way. "Can't scare me, _shaka_. I've got six sisters. Even Zaal can see you can barely walk."

"I'm in better shape than Quelb," Tana pointed out.

"_That is correct,"_ Quelb admitted, _"however I am not in any danger of losing vital blood vessels in my wings, for I have none to lose. If we return to the ship as I suggested, Zaal and I will be better equipped to assess the extent of your injuries."_

"That sounds good to me," Tana said tightly, "but what are we going to do with her?" She extended a talon toward the fallen asari. "We can't just amble off Thessia with a captive asari in tow, and there might be more where she came from. Don't you think it's strange that they only sent one hunter to capture Quelb?"

"_Darza did not seem interested in capturing me alive," _Quelb said nonchalantly. _"Fortunately, she and the one she called Tirsi seem to have been working alone. If they are associated with a larger organization, it is likely that their superiors are not yet aware of their failure."_

Out of habit, Tana tried to preen her injured wing. She stopped quickly as a fresh twinge of pain shot up into her shoulder. "All right, but that still doesn't solve our problem. How do we get her off-planet without bringing a horde of asari headhunters down on our tails?"

"That won't be a problem."

Oblivious to the way that comment made both Sol and Tana stare at him, Zaal went over to their prisoner, crouched beside her, and used his omnitool to inject something into her neck. She had been starting stir when Zaal approached her, but after he applied the mystery drug, she lapsed back into unconsciousness. Zaal—or possibly Quelb—checked to be sure she was still alive. Then Zaal removed one of the myriad devices that he wore attached to the outermost layer of his exosuit. This one looked like a large insect of some kind with a round, flattish body and six short metal legs. Zaal placed the device on the asari's coat near the neckline and stepped back. His device activated with a soft chirping noise, and a cylinder of orange holographic light sprang into being around the asari's body. Tana saw Zaal make a few tweaks with his omnitool, and then there was nothing more than an ordinary bedroll lying where the asari had been. It looked no different from the ones they kept in their field kits on the _Treno_. Sol chucked Zaal on the shoulder.

"That's one hell of an invention. When did you come up with it?"

Zaal shrugged. "Just this year. I uh—had some cargo I needed to move without Mother finding out about it. Even she can't hack the field. When she inspected the ship, she didn't even know it was there."

Tana tried to smile, but the expression turned into more of a grimace because of the lingering pain in her wing. She recognized a smuggler's trick when she saw it. Sniffing carefully, she found that Zaal's device had even hidden the asari's scent. Maybe there was more to the innocent star seeker than she'd thought.

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><p>The return journey to the ship was uneventful. An asari policewoman patrolling the docks stopped them and demanded to see their identification. Zaal exchanged the pertinent information with her, and she seemed satisfied. She didn't even glance at bedroll Sol was carrying, and appeared more eager to get back to her comfortable patrol car than anything else.<p>

From his vantage point inside of Zaal's exosuit, Quelb could easily see that the documents his friend presented to the police officer were falsified. Hastily scrubbed to avoid any mention of Quelb, as well. This revelation was a disturbing one, and Quelb resolved to devote a substantial percentage of his processing power to further examination of the problem.

It was distinctly strange to have his programming confined to an exosuit once again. Nearly forty years had passed since Tali'Zorah had allowed him to ride pillion with her in her suit. Back then he'd still referred to her as "Creator Zorah," a title that she always found difficult to countenance.

This separation of mind from body was simultaneously extremely limiting and wonderfully freeing. Without the interference of his material body, he was able to concentrate on matters that had long concerned him but which had taken a backseat to more important necessities such as maintaining his existence.

For instance, the problem of Doctor Liara T'soni's unusual reticence. Quelb had never met the woman personally, but he understood from Tali'Zorah's descriptions that Liara was an attractive member of her species in addition to being an accomplished archeologist, though she had not published a single paper in at least two decades. Upon their return to the _Treno_, Quelb compared notes with the rest of the crew, and discovered that Sol had actually met with the elusive woman, after a fashion. Quelb was pleased to learn that someone had taken the time to refine the technology that allowed organics and synthetics to communicate on a deeper level, but this small pleasure was vastly outweighed by his concern about Liara's methods. The need for secrecy he comprehended, but why send Zaal and his crew out to what was perhaps the most obscure sector of asari space in search of a communication buoy? Why not simply meet them here on Thessia? Why not convene with Zaal in a more conventional manner? The problem was a knot of riddles that Quelb, even with all his formidable intellect, was unable to untangle.

Since there was no brig on the miniature liveship, Sol stowed the asari Darza's inert body in one of the smallest bedrooms and sealed the door shut with an electronic barrier. Quelb doubted that she would break free, restrained as she was, but he tapped into the ship's sensors to watch over her just to be safe. There was, after all, little point in taking chances with a hostile prisoner aboard.

He was interested to learn that while Sol appeared to forget he existed unless he spoke up, Tana was always very much aware of his presence. It was some time before he realized that this was because the raloi found the way that he and Zaal appeared to share a body very disturbing. He might have attempted an explanation, but there never seemed to be an appropriate moment. Even after so much time spent alongside them, Quelb was not especially sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of organics, however even he could tell that his presence—or apparent lack thereof—caused Tana some discomfort. One simply did not discuss such matters while engaged in the repair of delicate membranes along the wings of an injured avian.

With Sol steering the ship while Zaal and Quelb were otherwise occupied, Quelb worried slightly for the crew's safety. Surprisingly, Sol proved to be an adequate pilot once he became accustomed to the unfamiliar quarian controls. Zaal's peculiar invention got the _Treno_ through asari customs scans without any trouble, and Quelb was more than a bit relieved when they were once again out in space.

Tana submitted to her treatment with a far greater degree of stoicism than Sol had displayed. She kept her eyes tightly shut unless asked to do otherwise, but she did not complain as Quelb directed Zaal through the complex surgical maneuvers that would cleanse the wounds to her wing and relieve some of her pain without endangering her ability to fly. They were fortunate that Zaal had informed Quelb ahead of time that a raloi crew member would be joining them. While Zaal did not have Quelb's medical expertise, he could accomplish the work very well with the specialized tools available in the _Treno's _med bay. Without such tools, Tana might well have lost part or all of her wing to infection.

It took them the better part of two hours to complete the job, and by then they were approaching the coordinates Sol had provided. While Tana rested in her quarters, Zaal returned to the helm and replaced Sol in the pilot's chair.

"We're almost there," Sol informed them, as if Quelb needed to be told.

"I'm just glad you didn't crash into an asteroid or something." Zaal let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. As was often the case when he antagonized his friend, he received a hard jab in his midriff for his trouble. Fortunately, Zaal's quarian heritage made him quite resilient, and therefore more than able to stand up to such treatment. He did utter a rather pitiful sound and rub his side as if injured. Quelb contemplated directing Zaal's exosuit to emit a light shock as punishment for such melodrama, but in the end he concluded that annoying his host when he had nowhere else to go was not the best course of action.

"Wait, this can't be right."

Zaal was looking at a screen showing all of the communication signals in the area around Tevura. Quelb saw immediately what Zaal meant. Where there should have been only one signal, there were two, and by the readings put out by the _Treno's_ sensors, those signals came not from communication buoys, but from two space-worthy vessels engaged in combat. Zaal looked dubiously over at Sol, who sat in the copilot's chair looking as if he was about to doze off.

"You did say those coordinates Liara gave you were somewhere near Tevura, right?"

"That's right."

"Then what's a human gunship doing out here fighting for its life against an asari frigate?"

Sol bounded up from his seat and leaned in over the screen Zaal's screen. He stared at the holographic representations of the two ships; one tiny and vastly outgunned by the other. Then he stepped back and shook his head. "No idea. Liara didn't say anything about ships."

"_Perhaps it would be best if we simply avoid the conflict,"_ Quelb suggested. _"While the _Treno _is equipped to engage in combat if necessary, doing so would place the biosphere in jeopardy. There are no quarian or turian colonies in the vicinity, so in the event that the Parnitha relay should malfunction, any damage to the biosphere could leave us without the means to procure food for you, Zaal."_

"You're getting something on one of the emergency channels," Sol informed them. He was hardly the most diplomatic member of his race, so he was waiting for Zaal to answer the call. Zaal tapped his screen to open the line.

"This is Captain Zaal'Zorah vas Treno speaking."

Quelb saw that the call came not from the smaller human vessel, as he'd expected, but from the frigate. The face of a young asari with dark purple skin and elaborate triangular facial markings across her cheeks and over her forehead popped into view on Zaal's screen.

"Captain!" she screeched through the audio linkup. Zaal winced, and Quelb shared the sentiment. "Thank the goddess you're here! That Alliance gunship is some kind of weird prototype, and it's ripping us apart!"

"_That description of the battle is not accurate,"_ Quelb warned. "_While the Alliance vessel appears to be intact, it has not fired since our arrival. It may be waiting to see what we will do. By contrast, the asari frigate is relatively undamaged and maneuvering aft of the _Treno_, possibly with the intention to engage."_

"Can you hear me?" cried the asari. Quelb had to applaud the woman's performance. He might have believed her story if the sensor data didn't so obviously contradict what she said.

"I hear you," Zaal replied darkly. "Do you need assistance?"

"Isn't that obvious? There's a hole in our hull!"

"_She is lying,"_ Quelb reminded Zaal.

"I can see that. Captain," Zaal said the word like it disgusted him to use it when naming the asari, "maybe you think we're idiots, but we know what you're telling us isn't true. I hope that fighter really does shoot you down, because it'll make getting the hell out of here way easier for us."

A high, feminine chuckle came from just behind Zaal's shoulder. The young captain leaped out of his chair and whirled around, and so Quelb was able to see the holographic projection of a young human woman standing close by. Composed entirely of green light and looking extremely pleased with herself, she wore Alliance armor but without any of the customary Alliance markings of rank or specialization.

"Looks like they're onto you and your little scheme, Bilquis," she said to the asari. "Better run now while you still can."

Sol immediately tried to club the hologram with the butt of his assault rifle, but his weapon passed through the human's image without effect. While Sol staggered into the copilot's control panel and the asari captain growled impotently, the human turned a friendly gaze on Zaal.

"It's good to see you Zaal. I'm Spectre Katrina Taptrin, but you're welcome to call me Kat if you help me bust up that terrorist ship out there."

Zaal smiled uneasily. "Sorry Spectre, but that sounds like it would kind of interfere with my plan of turning tail and running for my life."

"Little late for that, sweetie. Bilquis is aiming her main cannon at your little pirate ship as we speak."

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><p>Codex<p>

Spectre Katrina Taptrin: The youngest Spectre in known history, twenty-four-year-old Kat Taptrin is already legendary for her seemingly limitless capacity for refined violence. Equally skilled in using an omnitool and her biotic amplifier, she is also highly proficient with broad variety of both small and heavy arms. She has completed countless missions on behalf of the Galactic Council and even has a hair style named after her (the "Kitty").

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><p><strong>AN: Apologies for the late update! Diablo III dropped last week, and I wasted waaay too much time playing it. I have a few other writing projects I want to work on in addition to this one, so I'll be switching Crook and Spiral over to a biweekly update cycle from now on. Thanks for reading!**

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><p><strong>Review Responses<strong>

**shadowmythic: Wrex would have named one of his sons after Shepard, but unfortunately in this story, he only has the one so far (Sol). In my head, Wrex thought it was more important to honor Mordin for dying in the act of saving krogan fertility. As for "SM", that was just an acronym of your name. **

**M4GIC OR4NGEZ: Good to hear you thought the pacing was good; I always agonize over fight scenes because they're so easy to do wrong!**


	7. Heat

Chapter Seven: Heat

Since he couldn't crush the Spectre's skull at the moment, Sol decided he was going to ignore her. Making a point of stepping through her holographic body, he plunked down in the copilot's seat and brought up the ship's munitions interface. As he used his hand to flick through various schematics and readouts, he quickly came to one conclusion. He and everyone onboard the _Treno _were completely fucked.

"_I have identified the hostile vessel as a Serrice Technology paramilitary exploration ship called the _Azure Shadow_," _Quelb informed them. _"According to the Ilium maintenance logs, the _Azure Shadow_ was stolen while in dry dock awaiting repairs. The modified Kelirre Cannon currently charging on the enemy ship has an average yield equal to approximately twenty times the output of the Thanix model it is based on. I suggest that we maneuver out of its range if possible."_

"Doesn't this junk heap have any guns?" Sol roared to drown out Quelb's inexorable monotone. He'd scrolled through almost all of the ship's systems and found only defensive measures.

"Of course it's got guns." The Spectre answered before Zaal could. "Your captain here just didn't think you'd need to use them, so he kept you out of the loop. Maybe if you ask nicely he'll give you the right permissions."

Zaal used one hand to operate the ship while he pulled up a small screen with the background fuzzed out to nothing but black and white static. He tapped out what seemed like a random sequence on the screen, and suddenly Sol had access to what amounted to a small arsenal. They didn't have anything like the Kelirre monster the asari were packing, but what they did have was probably enough. Their artillery battery included two cannons that lay concealed inside of the ship's main body when they weren't in use, a torpedo launcher that was so small Sol had no idea how anyone could cram a bomb into one along with a full suite of anti-fighter guns. Sol contemplated using those guns to take out the Spectre's ship, but she was maybe planning on helping them, and if the armed-to-the-teeth _Azure Shadow_ couldn't pin her down, there was no way Sol could. The _Treno's_ weapons were impressive for a jury-rigged liveship, but only that. They were still hopelessly outmatched against the asari frigate.

"_Enemy cannon discharging,"_ Quelb droned.

Sol saw the shot coming, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Looking out through the viewport, he saw the white-hot shaft of metal erupt from the asari cannon. A split second passed, and Sol was sure he was going to die. Then the Spectre's pitifully small fighter snapped into place between them and the frigate. A web of green light sprang out from the fighter's kinetic barrier. Bending in an unnatural way that no energy had any right to bend, the web wrapped around the huge metal bolt that was hurtling toward them. Somehow the web completely arrested the shot's forward motion. The cannon shell slowed and then stopped. The frigid vacuum of space rapidly chilled the metal and compressed its outer body until it collapsed into a cloud of harmless drifting shards.

"Wow." It was all Sol could manage. His level of respect for human technology rose several notches, and he thought he might be willing to amend his opinion of the irritating Spectre. Of course, they never would have gotten into this mess in the first place if she hadn't interfered, but he could overlook that if she explained how her weird light web worked.

"Bilquis is probably cussing up a storm," the Spectre said with relish. Her hologram had been motionless during the time it took for her web to form, do its job, and then collapse, but her attention seemed to be back on the _Treno's_ crew again. She made a rude human gesture in the direction of the _Azure Shadow_. "You'd think she'd know better than to screw with me by now."

"_Does she have cause to be annoyed with you?"_ Quelb asked. His voice came over the PA now. Sol had to admit he was pretty relieved about that.

"You mean other than that I just saved all your asses from the only shot she had left in her cannon? Yeah, I sure hope so. I've only been chasing her purple ass for the past three months. Worst job I ever accepted, but I'm going to bring her down, even I have to follow her all the way out to Omega and back." She looked over at Sol and waggled her eyebrows at him in a way that she must have thought was cute. "You'd make my job a lot easier if you used those fancy stealth cannons to disable her propulsion systems."

Secretly impressed that the girl had the guts to flirt with a krogan, Sol obliged her.

"Don't get any ideas," he warned her as he unlocked the cannons and set them to orient on the _Azure Shadow_. "I'm just tired of getting shot at by little girls."

He wasn't terribly familiar with the layout of asari ships, so he decided to aim his first shots at the tail. After that, the _Treno's _targeting algorithms took over, and the only thing Sol had to do was make sure he wasn't accidentally wasting ammo shooting off into space. None of his attacks got through the frigate's barrier, but they did distract the asari crew long enough that Zaal managed to shift his ship into a better striking position. The Spectre did her part too, flying in close along the frigate's exterior as she peppered the glowing barrier with gunfire.

When Zaal slid the _Treno_ into place above the asari frigate, Sol dropped one of the precious four torpedoes they had in stock. Knowing that this would probably be the only chance they would get, he tried to make the shot count. He watched his screen instead of the viewport and prayed.

"_The enemy vessel's primary thrusters have been disabled," _Quelb said after the longest moment in Sol's life. _"While the _Azure Shadow_ may still be capable of limited short-range jumps, its mass effect field is unstable and deteriorating. Now that we have robbed them of main maneuverability, I do not think the enemy is likely to attempt any further hostilities." _

Sol lapsed back into his chair and lifted both hands onto his plate. He felt like he was getting the best sun bath of his life, like he could juggle four females without even breaking a sweat.

"Good job Sol!" the Spectre gushed. "If I didn't know better, I never would have guessed this was your first time running weapons."

And just like that, she made him feel like he was a toddler again. Zaal reached over and laid a hand sympathetically on his arm. The tacit gratitude and support did seem to help a little, though Sol never would have said so out loud.

"I just sent a transmission off to High Command," Taptrin continued. Either she didn't see the exchange, or she didn't care. "Let's get the hell out of here before the real authorities fly in."

Zaal let go of Sol's arm and focused his glowing eyes on the Spectre's hologram. "I thought you wanted to bring this Bilquis in personally?"

"This totally counts!"

Sol and Zaal looked dubiously at one another, and Taptrin sighed melodramatically. "Fine. Sure, I'd love to drag Bilquis and her cronies off for some Alliance-style justice, but they're asari. Got to let the asari take care of their own, at least when we're in their space. I've got a reputation to keep up, after all."

"With the way our luck's been going, you'll probably get another chance to shoot her anyway," Zaal muttered. Sol grinned. That was just the way he liked it.

"I like the way you think, Captain. Give me a minute to make sure Bilquis really isn't going anywhere. Then I'll meet up with you at the relay. Oh, and don't even think of trying to leave me behind."

"You planning on hunting us down too?" Sol inquired archly. Taptrin shook her head.

"Not particularly. Oh I could if I really wanted to, but you all haven't actually done anything wrong. Not yet at least. Anyway, I brought a present for you. Something I ah—liberated from an Alliance stockpile while I was requisitioning my fighter."

"You're going to have to give us more than that if you want us to hang around waiting for you," Zaal told her. Taptrin blew a raspberry at him.

"Pft. Not going to happen. You want what I've got, you wait like the good little boys your mothers think you are."

The hologram flickered and disappeared.

"You're not really going to wait," Sol said as Zaal prepped the ship for a jump. It was more of a statement than a question, but he wasn't really sure he knew how Zaal's mind worked anymore. "High Command's going to know we were here."

"_Solus is correct,"_ Quelb put in. _"The energy signature of a liveship—even one as small as the _Treno_—is quite distinctive. Any vessel scanning in this vicinity will learn within minutes of our presence."_

"We'll wait," Zaal told them, and that was that. They cooled their heels for forty long minutes by the Parnitha relay. Twice other ships passed them by, one asari merchanter and one salarian passenger transport. One of them even tried to contact the _Treno_. It was the salarians, of course. Nosy bastards. When Zaal ignored them for long enough, they went on through the relay.

"Do you think we should wake Tana up?" he asked Sol. Sol folded his brawny arms over his chest guard and shook his head.

"She needs the sleep."

Zaal leaned forward and rested his elbows on the console in front of him. "If we let that Spectre come along with us, we'll be taking on a lot of risk."

"Afraid she'll find your stash of red sand?" Sol quipped. Zaal shifted uncomfortably where he sat.

"That's not fair Sol. You know I'm not into that kind of thing."

"Right." Sol rubbed at one arm with a gloved hand. "I also know you were dead broke last year."

Zaal sighed. "I wondered when you'd bring that up. Can we do this later? Taptrin could be here any minute, and we don't know what kind of scanning equipment she has."

"What did you sell?"

Quarians were damned hard to read when they had their suits on, but Sol knew his friend. Zaal was shocked, hurt, and afraid. It was there in the way his head jutted slightly forward on his neck, and in the nervous jittering that started up in his left leg. "Stop it, Sol."

"What did you sell?" Sol repeated.

"I was a courier. Everything I carried was legitimate."

"Bullshit. Legitimate couriers don't fly around in ships armed with hidden cannons. They don't pull credits out of thin air. What the fuck did you do Zaal?"

"I didn't do anything wrong, all right?"

Sol let his silence speak for him while Zaal writhed in place.

"Prescription drugs, he finally admitted. "Merapozil. It's still in the testing phases, but they already have thousands of cases of the stuff. It's supposed to help with a lot of diseases batarians get when they stay on worlds outside of the Hegemony. With their government collapsing around them, a lot of batarians are fleeing their home sector with nothing but their ships and their credits."

Sol had his opinions about the batarians—or at least what was left of them—but he wasn't about to let Zaal sidetrack him. "What else?"

Zaal sucked in breath so hard Sol could hear it pop through the rebreather. "You can't tell Tana."

One day other species would learn not to tell a krogan they couldn't do something.

"Don't growl at me Sol; I'm serious. Promise me you won't say anything."

"Tell me what it was, or I'll loosen your elbows for you."

"Ugh, fine. Raloi pornography. They keep it off the extranet somehow, so hard copies can be worth millions."

Sol almost choked. "You bought this ship with the credits you made selling _porn_?"

"Sounds pretty sleazy when you put it that way, but yeah, that's what it was."

Sol laughed so hard he couldn't breathe. It took him several minutes to get enough control back to be able to pay attention to what was going on around him. By the time he got it together, the Spectre had arrived at the rendezvous point and Zaal was guiding her into the _Treno's_ tiny landing bay.

"How did the Alliance pack so much punch into such a small fighter?" Sol wondered aloud. Zaal wasn't paying him any attention. Maybe he was sore over having to admit what he'd done to get his ship.

"Let's go meet her there," Zaal said when the Spectre's fighter was securely inside. "Better have your rifle out just in case. If her fighter can stop a point blank cannon bombardment in its tracks, who knows what other tricks she's packing?"

Sol nodded amicably. He reached around behind him and lifted his M-86 Klaxon out of its holster. The weapon had seen better days since it was manufactured, but Sol took good care of it. Holding the Klaxon easily the crook of his arm, he reached out and whammed Zaal on the shoulder with his free hand.

"Hey."

"Ow! What was that for?"

"I don't give a fuck what you did to get the money."

"But you just—"

Zaal threw up his hands in frustration.

The Spectre was waiting for them beside her fighter when they arrived at the loading bay. Now that he saw it up close, Sol liked the fighter even more. Long and sleek, it had a protruding extension at the front that held the cockpit and a sharp, triangular wing on either side. There were no Alliance colors to be seen anywhere on the body, but Sol thought the paint job looked a little too new. He wondered how the Spectre had gotten her hands on the thing.

"Hey there!"

Taptrin waved energetically as Zaal and Sol came up to her. She was petite; if stood next to Sol the top of her head would barely clear his chest. Now that it wasn't distorted by the hologram, Sol could see that the woman's hair was pale yellow and cut into a distinctive wave that fell just below her chin. She was probably attractive by human standards, but to Sol's eyes, she looked like a tiny, fragile doll. Not really appealing. When she saw Sol had his Klaxon out, she held up her hands to show that she wasn't going to reach for a weapon.

"Come on guys," she whined, "I just saved your asses out there. If I wanted you dead I could've just let Bilquis take you out."

Sol kept the rifle trained on her. "Shut up."

Zaal went up to the Spectre and spent a couple of minutes running what looked like every detection protocol he had stored in his omnitool's drives. "You've got a pistol attached to the interior of your left boot," he said accusingly. Taptrin rolled her eyes.

"Paranoid, aren't you?"

"Just cautious." Zaal's omnitool faded out as he stepped back. "You can keep your pistol. Quelb can overload the clip before you get a shot off anyway. Oh, and I'd power down my amp if I were you. If it comes down to a biotics competition, I'm pretty sure Sol's got you beat."

Taptrin made an obnoxious moue with her lips. "But I use mine so creatively!"

Sol snorted.

"Have it your way boys, but if you're not going to shoot me anytime soon, let's raid the wet bar. Shooting renegade asari out of the sky always makes me thirsty."

Deciding that the Spectre probably wasn't going to get up to any mischief for the moment, Sol holstered his rifle. They did a little dance as Taptrin tried to fall in behind the two young men. In the end, Sol just stood still and let his bulk convince the Spectre she wasn't going to win that little contest. Shrugging nonchalantly, the little human traipsed out into the hallway and led the way, glancing over her shoulder occasionally to get directions from Zaal as she went. Sol brought up the rear, ready to hurl the Spectre into a wall with his biotics if she did anything untoward.

The _Treno_ was indeed equipped with a full bar, with options to tailored to suit both levo- and dextro-amino species kept discreetly separate by means of an ornamental partition. When the strange trio came into the ship's lounge, Taptrin split off and veered directly for the liquor cabinet. She must have liked what she found there, because after a few minutes of rummaging through Zaal's collection, she gasped and seized a squat silver bottle marked with some kind of human writing Sol didn't recognize.

"You've got sake? And it's actually from _Japan_?"

"Most of my industry contacts can't drink quarian liquor," Zaal pointed out.

"Right. I won't ask what industry that is, since you'll only lie to me."

Taptrin fished two glasses out from under the counter, one smaller than the other. "You don't happen to have chopsticks too, do you?"

"I'm afraid not."

Taptrin sighed as she saw Zaal and Sol peering suspiciously at her while she poured some of that human liquor into the smaller of the two glasses. The second glass she filled with a fragrant, hoppy beer that foamed up magnificently to the brim.

"You don't trust me. That's fine. You don't have to trust me. You just need to do as I say. I'm a Spectre, after all. Isn't that enough?"

Zaal looked uneasily over at Sol. "The last time I had a chat with a Spectre, we didn't exactly part on friendly terms."

"I know." Kat dropped her sake into her little well of beer and then gulped down the mixture like it was so much water. "That was Corbin though. Kind of a hardass. Used to be with the EDF, so you know the stick up his ass is long enough to probe a rachni queen. Lucky for you, I don't come with that kind of baggage." She poured herself another glass of beer. This time she took a significantly more delicate sip. "I also have what you want, and Cory didn't."

"How do we know if we want it if you won't tell us what it is?" Sol wanted to know.

"Oh you want it. Agree to take me along on your intergalactic shenanigans, and then you'll know what I mean."

Zaal still hesitated, and while Sol was starting to like this tiny fireball of a human, he didn't trust her. Kat examined them both for a few moments over the lip of her glass. Then she set it aside and folded her hands over her elbows.

"Look. If you aren't the gambling type, there's an easy solution. Drain my fighter's fuel, set off my beacon, and cut me loose. Thessian patrols fly through here every few days. One of them'll probably pick me up before I freeze to death."

Zaal started guiltily, and Sol realized that some inkling of a similar plan had been floating around in that soft quarian skull. Far from displeased, Sol was happy to learn his friend had at least one ruthless bone in his body.

"No one's going into cold storage here," Zaal said firmly. "I can't say I'm comfortable having you aboard, but we've already got at least one crazy woman out to kill us. We don't really need another."

Kat smiled and nudged fingers through the condensation her glass had left on the bar. "I knew you'd see it my way. Now shut up and put that geth on."

Zaal looked like he had a few words for the plucky Spectre, but something stopped him from snapping at her. From the tense way he held his shoulders and the slight tilt of his head to one side, Sol guessed that he and Quelb were having some kind of internal dialogue.

"_I do not know how you recognized my presence, Spectre, but if you wish to speak with me, I am listening."_

"Great! I've got a package for you back in the hold. Show me where I'm staying, and you're welcome to whatever it is Doctor T'soni wanted you to have."

She started briskly off in the direction of the crew quarters. Sol caught her by the arm and frowned down at her.

"Let go of my arm, or I'll break yours," she informed him sweetly.

"Try it," Sol dared her.

She did try. Launching her feet off the floor, she swung them up and wrapped her legs around Sol's extended limb. Sol felt his armor absorb most of the force of that pincer hold, but it was enough to make him open his hand, releasing Kat from his grip. She slid promptly off of his arm and kicked off his breastplate so she could flip back and bounce up into a low fighting stance.

"Dad always told me not to fuck with Spectres," Sol said ruefully. He shook out his arm a few times, checking to make sure everything still functioned. He could tell Kat had gone easy on him by the stupid grin she still had on her face.

"Your dad's a smart man," she observed. She chuckled as she stood up again. "When he's not checking out some hot piece of blue ass, I mean."

"I think that's enough jokes for now," Zaal said in his best understated, captainy voice. "You'd better show us what you brought. Quelb would be crawling out of his skin with curiosity, if he had any right now. We can worry about where to put you later."

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><p>Codex<p>

Nerat: An asari supremacist organization with the stated goal of placing every populated planet in the known galaxy under the direct control of a dictatorial government based on Thessia. Nerat often recruits its members directly from the ranks of asari mercenary companies like the Cold Talons and Discipline.

Bilquis: Formerly a lauded stage actress on Ilium, she has been a staple in the Brave Flower franchise (a series of nested vignettes concerning pureblood asari relationships), a dentist, and a powerful agent in the hierarchy of Nerat stealth and sabotage brigades. Charismatic and persuasive, she prefers to use subterfuge to accomplish her goals rather than force.

Corbin O'Neill: An Alliance-trained Spectre for nearly twenty years, Corbin is highly principled operative with a significantly less bombastic style than the one Kat Taptrin employs. He prefers to execute his missions so quietly that those involved never even realize he is there. Kat has encouraged her grizzled, middle-aged fellow to retire on more than one occasion, but Corbin prefers to remain at work.

The Earth Defense Force (EDF): A subsidiary component of the human Alliance military, the EDF is dedicated purely to the continuing security of the Sol system's borders. Often criticized for its dogmatic policies and rigid training methods, the EDF is nonetheless a potent military entity that has kept Earth safe from intrusion by hostile forces for the past three decades.

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><p><strong>Review Responses<strong>

**M4GIC OR4NGEZ: I had to shoehorn most of the space battle into this chapter (it didn't make sense to me otherwise). Still not entirely happy with it, but at some point I had to decide to put it on paper and move along.**

**shadowmythic: As of this chapter, there are three human Spectres: Katrina Taptrin, Corbin O'Neill, and Hiroki Miyatake. Of course I reserve the right to add more if I find it necessary!**


	8. Transient

CHAPTER EIGHT: TRANSIENT

Tana's dreams were extraordinary that night. One moment she perched on a long, thin branch that overlooked an arms-manufacturing depot. She leaped down from the tree where she was sitting just as a gunshot snapped through the space where her chest had been. The rifleman's follow-up volley didn't miss. Tana felt her wing tear horrendously, and then she was plummeting down into the next dream.

She flew over a vast deciduous forest on her home world. Trees splayed out beneath her like so many green sprouts just waiting to be devoured. Somehow she knew she wasn't using her wings to fly, and her dreaming mind struggled to come to grips with the notion.

It took her a lot longer to wake than it usually did. Contrary to popular myth, raloi hunters weren't capable of whipping from a sound sleep right into full battle readiness, though some came close. Tana knew how to recognize a drugged stupor though, especially when it was lying thick across her eyes and chest, keeping her docile and sleepy against her will.

The vivid sensations of the dreams faded slowly as she clawed her way up to consciousness. The drug resisted her, clinging to her mind like sticky moss to the side of a rock. It felt like an age before she was able to pry open her recalcitrant eyes. When she finally managed it, she found that she was lying in the long hammock that served as her bunk.

Her wing ached—a clear sign that the pain meds she'd taken earlier were wearing off. She was grateful for the pain; it was probably the only reason she had been able to wake up. She considered taking another dose of the numbing medication, but she wasn't sure how it would interact with whatever Quelb had used to put her under.

Swinging her legs around so she could sit up and rest her feet on the floor, she made a mental note to research methods of dismantling varn platforms. Quelb might have lost his, but there was always the next body he chose to occupy.

A few wiggles of her wing muscles showed that she could move them enough to fold them behind her, so she endured the momentary increase in pain. The doors on this ship had never been intended to accommodate a raloi wingspan, and Tana needed to be able to move freely. All it would take would be one feather caught on an exposed hinge and she'd be back in that horrid, sterile gray med bay getting stitched up again.

She knew better than to try and go up to the operations level when she was in a murderous mood like this one. Making her way gingerly out of her cabin, she went down a short hallway and up to the massive, circular door that stood at the end. When she punched in the access code, the ship's hydraulics purred deeply and peeled the door's interlocking halves apart.

A soft glow of artificial solar radiation warmed her feathers as she stepped into her favorite part of the liveship. She was lucky that she'd woken up during the "day cycle." When she inhaled, she could smell the clean scents of green growing things, running water, and recently turned earth. The _Treno_ wasn't large enough to support a true quarian biosphere, but Tana still enjoyed the feeling of connection that came from seeing crops she'd grown herself blooming in this small garden.

A tiny stream burbled through the center of the large globe that made up the interior of the biosphere. The water was very pretty, but it served more than just an ornamental purpose. Tana irrigated her crops with it and kept it running in a roughly straight line to demarcate the boundary between the levo-based and dextro-based plants. She would never eat the wrong vegetables, of course, though she wouldn't put it past either Zaal or Sol to wander in here and pluck the first fruit they saw.

Wishing there was enough space here to plant a few flowers Tana picked up a bowl from off a table near the entrance and went to pick the ingredients for a summer salad. Part of her longed to sink her beak into something fleshy, but she consoled herself with the thought that at least she wasn't about to dine on reconstituted protein goo.

She was evaluating a bush full of little purple berries for ripeness when her omnitool beeped insistently at her. Wondering who it could be, she answered the call. "Habaq here."

"_I am not disturbing your rest, I hope."_

The reply was unusually hesitant for Quelb. Deciding that her salad would be fine without the berries, Tana picked her way across a bed of light green beans and back to the table by the door.

"Would you stop bothering me if I said yes?"

"_Of course, Doctor. Adequate rest is vital to the recovery process. If I am imposing unduly, I will gladly postpone my request until such a time as you are prepared to hear it."_

Tana picked up a long, sharp knife and started chopping up her greens. "No, you'll just bug me later when I'm trying to take a nap or something. I'm only making breakfast anyway. What's on your mind?"

There was a long pause as she added a few spicy radishes to the mix. By the time Quelb spoke again, Tana was already whisking together the ingredients for her dressing.

"_I do not wish to interrupt your meal; however I think I must request your assistance. Solus, the Captain, and I are in the landing bay with Spectre Taptrin. Would you be willing to join us here?"_

Tana almost dropped her whisk. "There's a Spectre on the ship?"

"_Yes. A great deal occurred while you were under sedation. If you wish, I will explain—"_

"I'm on my way."

Dumping the chopped vegetables back into the bowl, she doused them quickly with the tart dressing, grabbed a fork from the utensil rack, and then headed for the lift.

She was chewing her way through the last of the salad when she arrived at the landing bay. As promised, Zaal and Sol were there along with a small human woman who had to be the Spectre. Tana wasn't exactly pleased to see the woman there, but any burgeoning suspicions she had boiled away when she saw what they were all looking at.

There was something resembling a large human male standing directly beside Taptrin's fighter. Tana was quite familiar with human anatomy from her xenobiology classes back on Turvess. Her admittedly limited knowledge of the species told her this human was built along the lines of an Alliance marine. Broad across the shoulders and chest and thick through the arms, he looked like he had been crafted to carry a shotgun. He was even wearing heavy Alliance armor of a much newer make than the suit Taptrin was sporting.

As Tana approached the little group, she thought there must be something wrong with the human male. He stood slightly hunched over and had his eyes closed even though everyone in the room was clearly looking at him.

"What in the names of all the Winged Ones is that?" Tana blurted. Zaal and Sol turned to welcome her into the semicircle, but it was the Spectre who spoke.

"Language, Doctor! There are children present!"

Tana yawned. She was careful to make the curve of her sharp beak a very prominent part of the gesture. The Spectre blanched momentarily. She bounced back readily enough though, walking briskly over to the big male of her kind and sliding an arm around his waist.

"You all have no sense of humor. Fine! Allow me to introduce you to J86, the latest in Alliance combat tech. The J's short for "Juggernaut," by the way."

"It's an android," Zaal explained. Taptrin waggled a finger at him and smiled in a superior way that made Tana strongly consider turning her into lunch.

"Not quite. He's only got some basic supplemental programming right now. Outfit him with the right A.I. though and this little guy can go toe-to-toe with a krogan and come out mostly intact."

Sol laughed outright. "Bullshit."

Tana almost shared that sentiment. The notion that an artificial human might stack up to a living krogan intrigued her, but Taptrin's claim sounded preposterous. Tana's area of interest was biology, not sapience engineering, yet anything that purported to challenge Sol was bound to be of interest. She tapped Zaal on the shoulder, careful to avoid the spot where she'd injured him on Thessia. His exosuit probably protected him anyway, but it suited Tana to practice a little courtesy once in a while.

"I take it this is why Quelb begged me to come up here."

Zaal nodded. "He wants to know if you think it's a good idea for him to try this body out."

Tana sniffed dismissively. "Why should I care? He can do as he likes. You know him better than I do, anyway, and you're his commander. Why don't you decide?"

"_It is because of our relatively recent acquaintance that I wish to know your opinion, Doctor Habaq. Both the captain and Solus have known me for many years as a varn inhabiting the shell of a former geth Prime, while you have interacted with me primarily via the ship's public address system. I believe that you, with your formal training in the application of the scientific method, will be more inclined to be objective in your assessment."_

Tana weighed her options. If she seemed too eager, Quelb would almost certainly catch on and wonder why. Too negative and he would hole upside Zaal's suit and never come out. She decided on a balanced approach.

"I'm no master machinist, but I think maybe you should ask how much processing power that thing has. You wouldn't want to get stuck in a body that doesn't' have enough juice."

"I think Alliance engineers are good enough to beat forty-year-old tech," Taptrin said pointedly. Zaal made a meek attempt to soothe the ruffled feathers.

"The geth approached technology differently from the way most species do. Most of us like to think in a straight line. We start with a problem and hammer at it until we find the best solution. Geth reasoned much more laterally. They could bring more resources to bear in less time than most organics, and they could process multiple thoughts at the same time. They liked to perform a whole slew of tasks competently instead of excelling at just one, and they designed their platforms with that in mind."

"_The original designs were quarian,"_ Quelb put in modestly.

"Maybe, but each new model was a little more different from the last one, until suddenly it was three hundred years later and my mother hardly recognized the first geth to come back out from behind the Perseus Veil."

"Why not give 'im a whirl?" Taptrin picked up one of the android's hands and waved it like a puppeteer twitching the strings on a marionette. "Doctor T'soni set this up special just for you, after all. It'd be rude to just send the poor little guy home in a box after we let 'im out to see the ship."

"Spectre," Tana said evenly, "if you want to keep all of your limbs intact, stop fondling that machine and keep your mouth shut. Quelb can decide in his own time whether or not he wants to take the risk."

No one spoke for several minutes after that, so Tana polished off the last bit of her greens and deposited her empty bowl in a bin that stood beside the exit. When she returned to the circle, she found Taptrin pouting disgracefully while Sol hummed to himself and Zaal bowed his head as he consulted silently with Quelb. Half an eternity seemed to pass before the quarian looked up, nodded, and went to place his hand on the Alliance android's shoulder. Taptrin jumped back as though she thought she might be burned by proximity to the transfer. Stupid girl.

It took far less time to shift a being's entire consciousness than Tana would have expected. Zaal stood beside the android for just a few short minutes before dismissing his omnitool and standing back. Everyone in the hangar jumped as the android jerked to life. A pair of shining blue eyes flew open as the android flexed its hands and looked down to examine itself.

"How does it feel?" Zaal asked anxiously. The android's unnaturally blue eyes focused on him.

"I detect no anomalies in the functionality of this platform," it replied. Tana was pleasantly surprised that the voice came out sounding like the natural bass of a mature human male. It was strange hearing Quelb's careful phrasing coming from the body of what looked like a born warrior, but it was still better than the harsh synthetic claptrap they'd all had to cope with previously.

"You having any trouble with the Alliance code in there?"

Taptrin touched the android on the elbow. It recoiled from the contact and nearly toppled over backward. "My apologies, Spectre. This platform is providing me with tactile feedback I was not privy to while inhabiting the geth construct. I am uncertain what the correct responses to these stimuli are."

The android's mouth and eyes contorted into an expression Tana had never seen before. Its thick black eyebrows rose to meet its hairline while both eyes seemed to be making a concerted attempt to stare in opposite directions.

"This platform's ocular transceivers appear to be capable of only a limited radius of vision," Quelb complained. Zaal went a little closer to him and examined the android body more closely.

"Well, it was modeled after a human."

"Hey!" Taptrin put one wrist against her hip and gave Zaal an admonishing glare. "I'm standing right here. And it's not like quarians or krogans exactly have eyes in the backs of their heads either."

Zaal didn't seem very impressed by the Spectre's bravado. His omnitool buzzed discordantly as it processed the data flowing in from the android.

"It may take some time before I am able to adapt to this new form," Quelb admitted. He tried to take a step forward, but his legs twisted around one another, dumping him to the landing bay floor. Taptrin stooped to assist him.

"I might be able to help you out with that. Learned a few things about how men move over the years. How they think they should move, anyway."

"You'll have plenty of time to practice," Zaal informed them. He was peering down at a small screen that was hovering above his forearm. "The Sol relay is on the fritz again. We'll have to find a place to hole up before we can start the search."

"You giving up on Liara?"

Tana thought Sol sounded disappointed.

"Come on, Sol. If she wanted to join us, she'd be here now."

"She sent me," Taptrin offered. She had her shoulder under one of the android's arms, and it looked like she was holding up most of its weight.

"Do you know where we can find her?"

Taptrin laughed and nearly dropped Quelb. "Sorry buddy." Then she grinned over at Zaal again. "Of course I don't know where to find T'soni. No one does."

Tana decided it was time to clear the air. "I'd like you to explain something for me. What kind of hold could a reclusive archeologist possibly have over a Council Spectre?"

Taptrin rolled her eyes in an obnoxious human gesture. "When Commander Shepard's old girlfriend tells you to do something, you do it."

"You say that like the man is still alive."

"He is, sort of." Taptrin eased Quelb into a standing position and released him, rolling her left shoulder as if it pained her. "There are Shepard VI's all over the place, and more vids and games than I want to think about. Maybe you guys think of him as a hero, but he's more than that back on Earth. He's a legend. Every kid in Alliance space grows up hoping she'll boink half as many aliens as Commander Shepard. Most of us know his life history better than we know our own. You're all crazy if you think you'll find anything near Earth, by the way. We've spent trillions of credits searching for the wreckage of the Citadel. No trace. Nada. Not even the Reapers know where it went."

Zaal looked at her for a moment. Then he reached up slowly with one hand and removed his exosuit's mask. "You didn't have me."

"Wow, you're kinda cute in there!" Taptrin squealed gleefully. Zaal sighed. If he'd been expecting some other reaction to what was probably her first sighting of a quarian's face, Tana might have told him that Spectres generally didn't spook so easily. There were no Spectres among her people yet, but she was familiar with the type. Taptrin likely had plenty of experience keeping calm under pressure, young though she might be.

"She's got a point though," Sol noted. Tana was interested to see that he didn't make any attempt to help Quelb, who was still looking extremely wobbly. "You're good Zaal, but maybe we should leave tracking down a dead human to the humans."

"We aren't just looking for Shepard," Zaal reminded them. "The Citadel was too damaged after the Flood to jump anywhere, but somehow no one's ever found even a hint of where it could have drifted off to. Don't any of you find that the slightest bit suspicious?"

Taptrin looked dubious. "Sure, but what makes you think you'll succeed where every ship in the Alliance failed?"

"Yes, what does make you think that, Captain?" Tana inquired. Zaal didn't miss the usual touch of sarcasm.

"Not while Taptrin's listening. Sorry Spectre, but I've only known you for an hour, and part of that hour involved you projecting an illegal hologram past my ship's defenses."

"Whatever!" Taptrin slipped her arm through Quelb's and tugged him in the direction of the exit. "I know when I'm not wanted. Come on, gimpy. Let's get to the rec room and get practicing."

Quelb attempted another jerky step and fell again, this time on his face. Both Zaal and Taptrin hurried to the varn's aid.

"What is this unpleasant sensation coming from above the largest orifice on my face?"

Zaal used his hands to gently tilt the varn's head back. "I think maybe you broke your nose. Did the Alliance build these models to feel pain?"

"Pain can be a wonderful teacher," Tana observed.

"Are all raloi this pretentious," Taptrin asked Zaal, "or is it just her?"

"I wouldn't know," Zaal hedged. "Tana's our cook though. If you don't want her to poison your dinner, you probably shouldn't insult her to her face."

"I never poison guests," Tana said primly. Taptrin grimaced.

"Right. Very comforting."

Between the two of them, they managed to get Quelb steadied again. Zaal beckoned to Sol, who was wisely standing off to one side of the melee. "Could you help the Spectre carry Quelb down the hall? I need to have a chat with the hanar Councilor. I think she might bump us up in the relay queue if I pull in a few favors."

"Anything to keep you idiots from stumbling around anymore," Sol muttered. He ambled up to where Quelb stood teetering on the balls of his feet. Before the varn could protest, Sol had grasped him by the waist and slung him over one shoulder like he weighed nothing. Tana sighed. So much for that contest.

* * *

><p>CODEX<p>

Sapience engineering: A branch of artificial intelligence research that strives to provide newly developed A.I.'s with self-awareness and personality.

The Flood: Fanciful terminology for the mass effect phenomenon that swept through the galaxy in the wake of Alliance Commander John Shepard's actions aboard the Citadel forty years ago. More accurately described as a tide or a series of ripples, the expanding field touched every star system that was home to a mass effect relay and brought significant biological changes to both organics and synthetics caught in its flow.

The Ancile: A complex shielding technology developed by the Systems Alliance to combat enemy artillery fire while still maintaining the small size and maneuverability of a fighter-class warship. Dubbed the Ancile by its designer, Doctor Hayden Grant, this web-like biotic manifestation is achieved by the work of a dozen hybrid organo-synthetic virtual intelligences operating in tandem to manipulate a series of extremely compact mass effect fields.

Ponders the Radiance of the Luminous Expanse: A bit of a maverick among her people, the first hanar Councilor believes that a politician's full life story should be laid bare for her people to inspect. As such, she eschews face names, preferring to be called by her soul name. Despite this quirk, she is an effective diplomat, and often serves as an advocate for change on the Galactic Council. Her progressive tendencies place her at odds with the other four Council members, who all prefer to maintain the status quo whenever possible.

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><p>READER RESPONSES<p>

M4GIC OR4NGEZ: I still mess up every time I try to type your handle! Grr! I am glad to hear you thought the last chapter's quality was up to par though. I've added an entry to the Codex for this chapter about the shield as you requested.

jaass20: Kat's definitely more bombastic than the others are (well, except maybe Sol when he gets moody). I didn't originally plan for this character to be a Spectre; she sort of snuck up on me. She wasn't even going to be a woman originally!


	9. Discord

Chapter Nine: Discord

So there I was, aliens all around me on a ship like nothing I'd ever seen before. Oh I've been on a liveship. I've even flown around in one of those mini-me models Zaal's baby is based on. The _Treno_ was no ordinary light frigate. I never bothered to check, but there were probably little bolt holes all over the ship with goodies just waiting to be liberated. I'm no thief though—unless the mission calls for it.

Funny that Zaal mentioned Councilor Ponders the Radiance of the Luminous Expanse (that's right; you'll never get those three seconds it took to read that back). She was the one who sent me out into asari space. She and Liara T'soni, that is.

It's tough to say when T'soni first floated across my radar. Everyone knows who she is. Famous Prothean researcher and the mother of Commander Shepard's love child! Okay, so no one's ever actually confirmed that last one, but I have it on good authority that the two of them "embraced eternity" right before the final push on the Citadel transport terminus. Look up Major Coats in Norfolk sometime if you don't believe me. Make sure you bring lots of brandy though. Man's never been the same since that queen bitch wife of his died.

ANYWAY. I met T'soni on one of the rare occasions when she actually wiggled out of whatever tentacle cave she calls home. She's hot, if you're into booky scientist types. Gave a decent speech too. Hardly boring at all. I was helping a friend out with security, so I was hanging around backstage while T'soni was practicing her lines. I tried to chat her up, draw her out a bit, but that woman's got steel shutters around her mind. Always polite but never nice. Cold, maybe even frigid.

Come to think of it, maybe that's when Squiddy McInk got hold of my private line. I don't give that frequency out to anybody, not even the Council. Somehow T'soni figured out how to hijack it anyway. One fine Saturday evening I was just minding my own business, clipping my toenails and watching some old vids. Out of the blue comes this vid-mail on that secure channel no one but me and a few special friends are supposed to know about.

Thinking it's probably just Nereus begging me for another romantic night on the town, I ignored it and got back to my Dorian and the Scamp episodes.

It wasn't Nereus. I've got some pretty heavy security on my omnitool, so I was understandably freaked out when Detective Dorian fizzled out and Liara fucking T'soni fizzled in.

"I need you to do something for me, Katrina," she tells me in that "I'm doing my best to remind you of your mom" voice of hers.

"You need to get the hell off my omnitool!"

Pretty glad I was on my own, actually. If anybody had seen me, they probably would've thought I was talking to myself. You can't get to be a Spectre without being at least a little crazy, but there's no need to go letting the whole neighborhood know all about my baggage.

"Some acquaintances of mine are gathering recruits for an expedition. I want you to make yourself available to them."

"Yeah, that's not going to happen."

T'soni just smirked at me. Smirked! At me! Kat Taptrin! Bitch.

"Your reputation for quick-wittedness is well deserved, I see. We can only hope that you will consider rehabilitating your attitude once you find yourself aboard Mr. Zorah's ship."

I was about ready to spit in her face—well technically I'd just be spitting into the air where her face was, but she'd get the point I'm sure—when I recognized the name she'd said. "Wait. Zorah? As in Tali'Zorah vas Normandy?"

"Her son, actually. His name is Zaal."

"I know what his fucking name is. Why didn't you say it was him in the first place?"

"I didn't realize his identity would be important to you."

"Bullshit. You knew enough to find this line, so you've got the finesse to figure out that I've got a thing for quarian guys."

T'soni just kept on smirking. I wanted to reach through my comms implant and throttle her, but since that wasn't possible, I settled for sending a suite of attack bots her way.

"Regardless, I seem to have gotten your attention." The image flickered in front of my eyes for a second while T'soni dealt with the bots. Then she was back, looking like nothing had even happened. "Would you like to know what the objective of the expedition will be?"

You can probably guess how the rest of that conversation went. T'soni told me Zaal was about to set off looking for Commander Shepard's remains and I pretty much lost it. Lots of cussing, very little sense. You know how it is.

I rolled out of bed as soon as T'soni was done jerking me around and grabbed my gear. Then it was off to the hangar. I st—requisitioned one of the new Centurion-class fighters and lit up the FTL drive. My new baby and me were already halfway to the relay before anybody even thought to look for me.

Jumped a few queues on the way to the coordinates T'soni gave me, and damned if she wasn't right about Zaal and company being there.

Had a little snafu with Bilquis once I came out of the jump. Old girl doesn't know when she's outmatched. Anyway, during the dogfight I realized I was carrying some extra weight. When I massaged the fighter's computer a bit, it came up with a snapshot of an ambulatory AI frame and a message from T'soni:

"I see you've decided to carry out your end of our agreement," was all it said. Smug little shit of an asari!

Who can say how she knew I'd take the Centurion? Maybe she knows one of the other Spectres. Maybe she knows O'neill! He'd be just her type, actually. Stodgy, handsome, _middle-aged_.

All this rambly nonsense is just to explain how I, Kat Taptrin, bitchingest Spectre in the galaxy, ended up on a smuggler's galley giving toddling lessons to an old geth. Yeah, I know what we're supposed to call them. I guess everybody else forgot their history. You know, little over forty years ago, when thousands of geth sided with the Reapers and tried to wipe out all organics?

Whatever. Quelb's not so bad, actually. He's got a funny, scholarly way of looking at the galaxy, and it's a little hard to stay angry at somebody when he can't even put one foot in front of the other.

"That's it, big guy, you've got it! Roll at your own speed! Not like we're going anywhere soon anyway."

"Your insincere blandishments are not helping, Spectre."

"Oh I'm sorry tinhead. Would you rather have one of the other hundred people lining up at the door come in and cheer you on?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. Must have found a data packet on human expressions buried somewhere in there.

"I take your point. Your continued assistance in mastering this platform's hydraulics would be appreciated."

"Fine, fine." I went over and held one of his hands so he could lean on me while he took a few wobbly steps across the lounge floor. "I thought they built you AIs to learn quickly."

"Varn processes are highly adaptive, but this body is so alien that I find it difficult to think of it as my own. This disconnect is causing some interference between my core processes and the body's extremities. I sometimes feel that my thoughts are not welcome within the Alliance technology."

He actually made it across the room that time. Improvement!

"Sounds kinda like a bad organ transplant."

Quelb was staring at me again. He always stared, even though I told him he's supposed to blink. "Your analogy is imperfect, Spectre. While I am experiencing some discomfort, I do not feel as though this platform is in any way rejecting my mind. It is simply unfamiliar."

I let go of his hand. He didn't fall this time (sadly), so I golf-clapped for him a few times and headed for the exit. "Looks like you've got the hang of it now! You keep practicing. I'm off to see what Zaal's up to."

About two steps out of the door I noticed a flicker of movement just around the elevator door. Now I didn't know Zaal's crew very well, but I seriously doubted that either Tana or Sol would ever try to avoid anyone on their own ship. I got a running start and rolled across the three meters or so it took to cross from the lounge to the elevator. Came up with my pistol in my hands, and good thing too.

There was a little asari crouched in the corner with a ball of biotics crackling between her hands. I didn't have enough time to keep her from launching the singularity, so I snapped out a shot at one of her legs and sent up a prayer that my barrier would hold up. Turns out I shouldn't have wasted my breath.

She screeched something awful when my little round nailed her in the knee. Her biotics were pretty much for just for show; I hardly blinked when the singularity nudged up against my barrier. Didn't even mess up my hair (thank God).

"You shot me!"

Not what I expected to come out of the mouth of a hard-bitten asari commando. I took a close look at the girl and found out that she was just that: a girl. She couldn't have been more than a hundred—practically a baby in Octolady terms. Probably thought that flashy black coat of hers made her look cool. Bet she didn't like it so much with all that heavy leather draped over an injured leg.

"What the hell are you doing off your mother's apron strings?"

I thought it was a pretty reasonable question.

"Screw you!"

"Yeah, that's not going to happen. Least not until you're old enough to look halfway legal. What's your name, girl?"

"I'm not telling you anything!"

"Her name is Darza, Spectre."

Quelb came bumbling out of the lounge. Got to give him credit; he didn't try to run. He just walked slowly the whole way, calm as could be. "She became our prisoner after she attempted to capture me during our visit to Thessia. In my distraction as I learned to navigate this new platform's systems, I did not remember to administer a supplement to the first sedative I used to subdue her. Have you been injured? I believe I have acquired sufficient fine motor skills now to apply first aid if necessary."

"I'm fine." No way in hell was I letting him near me when he was still wobbling like a top. "Anything else I should know? Got any baby yahg hiding belowdecks?"

"There are no yagh—juvenile or otherwise—currently aboard this vessel."

Quelb looked down at the asari, who was still pouting in her corner of the elevator. If the expression on his face wasn't completely random, he actually looked sympathetic. "You may no longer be under sedation, Darza, but you remain our captive. I urge you to answer our questions."

"I'll never betray my sisters!"

"If you wish to receive treatment for your wounds, you will. Left unattended, you will reach a critical level of blood loss in less than hour. Beyond that time, I may no longer be able to help you."

Darza grabbed her leg and pressed both hands against the spot where I'd shot her. She's…not too bright.

A minute or two later—when she was done screaming her head off again—she gave up and collapsed back against the elevator wall. "An asari commando doesn't care if she's mortally wounded. She completes her mission."

"That is true." Quelb knelt carefully so he was looking Darza in the eye. "If you were such a commando, hardened by years of fighting and following orders without question, you might be expected to conform to such traditions. It is fortunate that you are only a young girl who has been led astray."

"What do you know? You're just a stupid human."

I leveled my pistol on her other leg. That shut her up real quick.

"It appears that you do not recall our acquaintance." Quelb sounded a little hurt.

"What "acquaintance?" I'm no hooker, and if I was I wouldn't sleep with weird Alliance meatheads."

"We have been in communication for some time, actually." I guess Quelb decided not to notice the hooker comment. "Although it was carried out under false pretenses, I enjoyed our philosophical discourse. Your insight into the works of Matriarch Sanalia is remarkable in one so young."

It took the girl a second, but she eventually realized what was going on. "Quelb?"

"_Quelb! Spectre! My console shows a shot fired in the elevator. Are the two of you all right?"_

Since I didn't really feel like watching Quelb catch up with his terrorist buddy, I turned away and linked my omnitool to Zaal's. "Took you long enough to notice. I know the Councilor's a riveting conversationalist, but damn. We could've been dead and out the airlock by now!"

"_Sorry Spectre. I had to daisy chain the ship's comms to get a signal out into hanar space. That pretty much ate up our systems until a minute ago. Since you've got time to be sarcastic, I'm guessing you already took care of whatever it was that shot at you."_

"Yeah, no thanks to you. Could have told me you had one of Bilquis' henchmen lurking around here."

"_Shit! Darza got out? I can't believe I forgot about her! I'll be down in just a second."_

"Don't bother. Quelb's got it under control. Did you twist the Councilor's tentacles hard enough to get us out of Parnitha sometime this year?"

"_Ugh, yes. Had to promise her a private meeting with my mother, but we're cleared to pass through in just a few minutes."_

"That's good. Thanks to your little conference, every Nerat cell in the galaxy probably knows where we're at now. Won't be long before they send more than just one frigate out after us."

"_I'll prep the drive core."_

* * *

><p>Codex<p>

Major Coats: For many years this career military man was involved in an inexplicable romance with a woman calling herself "Jacqueline Nought." He has claimed to hate her on multiple occasions, and yet their tempestuous affair has been the subject of several major holovids, a pornographic novel or two, and even a culturally insensitive comic book (which cast the powerful biotic, Nought, as a ball-busting predator).

Asari ethnic slurs: The recent increase in terrorist attacks by asari agents has caused a resurgence in anti-asari sentiments among other races. This negative feeling sometimes manifests in harsh, inappropriate epithets from otherwise reasonable individuals.

* * *

><p>Reader Responses<p>

M4GIC OR4NGEZ: I had to look up what you meant here. Hopefully Quelb doesn't sound like that character to you. X.x;

shadowmythic: It's similar, but not the same. Quelb's new platform is mostly synthetic, but it was designed with hybrid organic-synthetic components in mind. It's more like EDI post-Synthesis, but constructed along a more systematic plan (as opposed to the random space magic rearrangement of the Synthesis Wave). Does that make sense?

Mr. Vaz: I'm glad you found my story! I considered putting Shepard in the characters list to make it easier to find, but I thought that would be a bit disingenuous. As for self-editing, I found about eight different typos and continuity errors in the new chapter after you commented. I don't know if that means I'm good at my job or terrible. At any rate, thanks for reviewing! I hope you enjoy this new chapter.


	10. The Lady in White

Chapter Ten: The Lady in White

We made it to Mars with everyone mostly intact. Thanks to Zaal's toys, I didn't even have to give my Centurion back. He put it under some kind of barrier that made it look, sound, and smell like a broken-down old escape pod. Since that's exactly the kind of junk people expect to find on a quarian ship, we made it through Alliance security without a hitch.

Zaal wanted me to stay behind while he went ashore to meet up with some turian mercenary captain. He shook his head

"You just stole a valuable prototype from the Alliance. I don't think it's a good idea for you to head back into one of their most heavily defended bases."

Cute that he actually thought it mattered.

"Aw, you afraid the big Alliance brass'll try and toss your new Spectre pal into a prison cell?"

"Can they do that?"

"Oh man, I'd just _love_ to see them try."

I strapped my pistol to my leg and that was the end of that. Zaal didn't argue. Smart boy.

You'd never expect to find an old-timey English pub in the middle of the red Martian waste, but there is one. Just one. The owner's name is Bernard, but he'll lay you out if you call him anything but Bernie.

I don't know how in all the asari hells she pulled it off, but when we walked into Bernie's, Bilquis was there, having a drink with the big turian lady we'd come to see. I'm not even going to mention what Bilquis looked like (okay, she was smoking hot in her white sun dress). The turian deserves a mention though. Woman had hips to die for. You could tell, even under the orange-and-gray armor she had on.

Bernie makes everybody leave their ordnance at the door, and this turian didn't seem happy about it. She didn't do anything too obvious—sometimes new recruits will reach up and pat the spot where their rifles should be—but she leaned forward a little in her seat like she expected to be weighed down something. Not sure what she was worried about; with her military training she could probably gut any three of us with her bare hands anyway.

Zaal didn't seem like he realized anything was wrong. He doesn't have the same delightful history with Bilquis that I do. I was tempted to rip her a new asshole right then and there, but I didn't want to risk an all-out brawl. Bernie serves the best (only) dark beer on Mars, and there was no way I was going to let some washed up actress take that away from me.

Maybe Zaal didn't recognize her, but I sure as hell did.

"Hey Bilquis. What the _fuck_ are you doing here?"

She looked over at me and tilted her martini glass my way. "This is the Spectre I was telling you about, Azil. Bit of a temper, don't you think?"

The turian took a sip of the green shit she was drinking before she bothered to look at me. "So it seems. Hello, Spectre. It's truly an honor to meet the famous Kat Taptrin. Has anyone ever told you you're far more attractive in person than you seem in the vids?"

Sigh. Why do turians always have to think they're hilarious? I was going to give that one a close-up of my fist, but Zaal stopped me.

"Commander—" that was the turian's rank, I guess, "do you know who that woman is?"

He pointed one of his three fingers at Bilquis. Some of the patrons at the bar counter turned around in their seats so they could see what a stray quarian thought was so important.

"Sure. Who hasn't heard of Matron Bilquis? Greatest actress since Zorania, if you ask me. Even played the voice of our Spectre here, in that animated feature they made for the kids."

"Don't remind me."

Azil smiled. It's creepy when turians smile. All mandibles and beady black eyes. "Why not? She did some amazing work. Got your voice just right."

"Before this turns into some kind of melee, I think there's something you should know, Commander."

There Zaal went again, sticking his hand into the varen's mouth. I really wanted to carve out a piece of turian hide for a souvenir, but I couldn't do it with Zaal hovering between me and Azil.

"Oh?" Turians don't have eyebrows to raise, so you have to watch for their mandibles to twitch. Azil's were swinging open and shut like a rusty gate in a hurricane. She was definitely laughing at us. "What's that?"

"Did Bilquis tell you she's been moonlighting as a terrorist? She's with Nerat."

Azil set down her glass and got to her feet. Damned if she wasn't almost as big as Sol, too. "Is that true Bilquis?"

Bilquis drained her drink, cool as a blue cucumber, and tugged a crease out of her dress. "It might be."

"Then it might be my fee just went up. Better make me a new offer."

"The number I quoted you is all I'm prepared to pay."

"That's too bad." Azil glanced over at Zaal. "Looks like the Talons will be sticking with you, Captain. You'd better be good for it."

She scanned the room then. Probably saw the same thing I did: asari agents closing in from every direction. Zaal put his back up against mine and flexed his fingers like he was regretting leaving his Kurchali at the door.

"I've never reneged on a deal before, Commander. I don't want to start now."

If you asked me who threw the first warp field, I'd have to tell you I don't have a damn clue. That's one of the problems with problems with Bernie's "take all their weapons away" strategy. Can't exactly ask a biotic to rip out his implant and stuff it in the coat room.

I heard Bernie shouting for us all to take it outside and then there were biotics flying everywhere. Bilquis had about fifteen of her cronies packed into the bar (asari wearing holosuits, probably—we never bothered to check).

Zaal, the turian, and I weren't on our own though. A big blond guy behind the bar took out an asari with a shotgun spread to the back before one of her buddies tossed him up into the rafters with a lift grenade. How the hell did she sneak that past Bernie and his bouncers? No idea.

Zaal had his own fun little tricks though. He waited until both of us were crouched behind an overturned table. Then he switched on the best stealth screen I've ever seen. Just vanished like he'd never even been there. I could feel his knee digging into my calf, and I still wasn't completely sure he was where I thought he was. He waited for a lull in the biotics display and booked it. A few seconds later, I saw an asari go down with an omniblade through her neck. Zaal's a vicious creature when he feels like it.

Azil didn't even bother ducking. She had some kind of crazy tech shield up that just deflected everything the asari threw at her. She wasn't doing much damage with her own biotics, but she was keeping most of Bilquis' people focused on her. That left The Bitch Herself to me. Just the way I wanted it.

I blew one of Azil's warps to bust out an opening. Neither of us was very strong in the biotics department, but you can get a pretty hefty payload when you crash one field into another. I think I might have gotten one of those biotic grenades too, because asari just went flying in every direction. Poor Bernie. He had a hell of a time cleaning the blood off the floors.

Inconsiderate cow that she was, Bilquis was running away and leaving her "comrades" to do the dirty work. Okay, so maybe I wouldn't want to fight wearing a Marilyn Monroe knockoff, but I'm not the one who brought pumps to the beat down party.

I ran out of Bernie's just in time to see the hem of Bilquis' dress flap around a bend in the hallway. There were a few gawkers peeking into the bar and getting in my way, so I lost more time eeling through the crowd. Lucky for me, it's not too tough to track a hot asari through a base full of sexually repressed Alliance soldiers. I just followed the trail of drooling corporals, and they led me right to her.

When I caught up, Bilquis was trying her charms on some mercenary that was guarding the walkway out to the civilian docks. She had her tits all pushed up and perky, but the merc didn't seem too distracted. He held his rifle like he'd just love an excuse to use it, and his most likely target was probably the stupid actress trying to flirt her way past him.

"Come on, _calto_," Bilquis purred, "the screening for my new movie is in a couple of hours. You wouldn't want me to be late, would you?"

"You some kind of actress?"

Damn that merc was cold! Bilquis was putting on her A-game, but she was getting nowhere. I flicked on my stealth generator and snuck out from my hiding place around the corner. Maybe my tech isn't as fancy as Zaal's, but it does the job. I was getting ready to armlock Bilquis from behind when the merc suddenly looked right at me. His hand shot out before I could react, and the next thing I knew I was face-to-face with him. A split-second later I felt restraints snap shut around my wrists and my camouflage melted. I tried to hack the cuffs, but the merc didn't give me a chance. I managed to catch a glimpse of Bilquis sticking her tongue out at me just before the merc punched me hard in the gut. Guy had quite an arm—I went down like an Ilian hooker—fast and breathless.

He didn't knock me out though, so I heard what he was saying while I was rolling around and gasping on the pavement.

"Commander. We've got two intruders at the east hangar entrance. I've neutralized one, but it looks like the other got away."

Short pause while he listened to his CO's response.

"She's human, Alliance colors. The escapee is an asari wearing a white dress and claiming to be an actress. Want me to pursue?"

Another pause, longer this time. I was starting to get some of my wind back, so I tapped into the station's wireless and started working on the cuffs again.

"Understood. Sorry Commander. I didn't realize she was with us."

I wasn't getting anywhere with my hack, so I was pretty relieved when the merc bent down and undid the restraints himself. First thing I did was punch him in his stupid face.

"Idiot!"

Gotta hand it to the guy, he stood there and took it. Didn't even flinch, like he'd been expecting the hit. He rubbed his jaw and grinned at me. "Been called a lot worse. You might want to try not creeping up on your allies next time, Spectre."

He offered a hand and I let him help me up. "You weren't supposed to know I was there. How did you see me, anyway?"

He tapped one of the lenses on the goggles he was wearing. Big clunky piece of gear, but I guess mercs use whatever they can get.

"You're one of Azil's people."

His rifle went into its holster before he answered. "That's right. I'm her XO. Cody Miller. Pleasure to meet you."

He stuck his hand out again like he wanted me to shake it, but I was too pissed at him for letting Bilquis get away.

"If you were Alliance, I'd have you court-martialed for interfering with Council business."

"Guess it's a good thing I work for the old lizard then."

"Don't push your luck, buddy."

I rubbed my wrists for a few seconds to get rid of the tingly feeling the cuffs had left behind. Then I opened up a channel to Zaal. "You still alive?"

"_Mostly. Commander Toria took a few shots in the chest, but her armor absorbed the worst of it. Did you catch that asari?"_

"She got away."

"_That's too bad. At least we've still got Darza though. She's hiding something, and I think it has to do with the way the Citadel disappeared."_

"So they made off with it while everyone else was watching the Reapers retreat."

Miller cocked his head in my direction when he heard that. Well, he could listen in if he wanted to. His career as a merc was over anyway.

"_Sounds pretty ridiculous now that I hear it out loud. Nerat's definitely up to something though. It's got to be related to Commander Shepard's death somehow. Why else would they come after us?_

"Because they want what we want."

"_Shepard's remains? But why? Why would they care?"_

I glared at Miller, who had scooted a bit closer while Zaal and I chatted. "Let's talk about it when we get back to the ship, all right? Numbnuts here is getting a little too interested."

"_Numb—oh. You mean the mercenary who captured you."_

"Watch it!"

"_Right. Well, the two of you should come meet Commander Toria and me at the infirmary."_

"Here's hoping she strings him up by his toenails."

I didn't bother to update Miller. The infirmary was on the other side of the base from where we were, so I started walking pretty fast. Miller fell in behind me and sauntered along just like he hadn't done anything wrong.

My Spectre ID got us through all of the security checkpoints in a flash, so we actually got to the infirmary first. I plopped down on one of the uncomfortable benches in the lobby and stretched out my legs so there was no way Miller could sit his dumb ass down next to me. He didn't seem to mind. Just stood close by with his arms folded across his chestplate. The clerk at the front desk gave him a funny look, but he didn't even take off his goggles.

It felt like an hour went by before Zaal came in with a squad of Alliance medics. They had the turian strapped to a stretcher, and by the careful way they carried it, Toria probably had some internal injuries Zaal didn't mention. Miller went to talk to the medics while I swung my legs around to make room for Zaal on my bench. He sat down and put his head in his hands.

"This is bad. I was counting on Commander Toria's help. We can't do this with just the five of us."

"Six, if you count Darza."

"Five, six, sixty—it doesn't matter how many. You're the only one of us who has any real combat experience."

I slung an arm over his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake. "Don't sell yourself short, Captain. You've all held out pretty well so far."

"Against small groups of amateur terrorists, sure. Darza almost killed Quelb back on Thessia. What if we run into a slaver ship, or one of those salarian drug cartels?"

"Salarians in Alliance space? Not if they want to keep their slimy hides intact. Look, if you're really worried about it, I can bring the Alliance in on this. Soon as we tell them we've got a lead on Commander Shepard, they'll have every ship in the fleet out on patrol."

"That wouldn't work. They already tried canvassing the Sol system, remember? If the Alliance flies out in force, they'll just scatter any clues around until there's nothing to find anymore. No, we can't involve them."

"So what do you want to do? Even I kinda feel like we're in over our heads here."

"I might be able to help you with that."

Miller finally took off his goggles. The medics hurried off with Toria, so that just left Zaal, me, and Idiot Boy. Well, there was the clerk too. She looked like she wished we'd get the hell out of her lobby.

Miller was a good-looking guy, if you don't mind helmet hair. Or gingers. Big scar across his left eyebrow that didn't look like it came from a gunshot wound. His neck was a little thick for my taste.

"Commander says I'm supposed to take the contract myself, if you want me. She was going to go, but she'll be in the operating room for at least a few hours."

Zaal squirmed a little while he was trying to make a decision. "Maybe we should stay here while she recovers."

"Fine by me." Miller shrugged. The missile launcher he had strapped to his back clunked against his shoulder armor. "We figured you might want to get out of here in a hurry, what with all those psycho asari on your tail."

"I appreciate the offer, Mr. Miller, but I don't think one mercenary is going to be enough firepower for what we're headed into."

Miller scratched at a bit of orange scruff he had on his chin. "I could bring in a few rookies, but the pickings are pretty slim. Don't mind telling you, but we lost a lot of good people in that fracas over in batarian space. I'd offer you the whole unit, but truth is I'm all we can spare at the moment. Somebody's gotta stay home and train the new recruits."

"So go crawl back into whatever shithole you came out of."

I thought it was a reasonable suggestion. Zaal and the merc disagreed.

"All right." Zaal got up and shook Miller's hand. "I don't want to turn around and fly home without finding what we came here for. You're hired. You'd better give me a discount though. I was paying for Commander Toria."

Miller ran a hand along the barrel of his rifle like it was his girlfriend's ass. "I can keep up with the commander. Don't have her tricked-out armor, but I'm a better shot in a pinch."

"And so modest, too!"

Zaal was glaring at me through his mask. Don't ask me how I knew. I just did. "Do you have a problem with Mr. Miller joining us?"

"Damn right I do! I almost had Bilquis when he grabbed me!"

"From what Commander Toria told me, you approached the checkpoint under cloak. How was Miller supposed to know you weren't there to take him out? You could have been Bilquis' accomplice, or a rival mercenary."

I almost screamed at him. I really wanted to. Would've been satisfying. I remembered who I was just in time. Spectres don't screech. We bide our time and do what's necessary when the chance comes. I shut it all down. My crush on Zaal, the rush from chasing Bilquis, even the frustration of losing her.

"Your ship, your rules, Captain. I'll go along with whatever you decide."

He probably didn't believe me, but I didn't need to convince him. All I had to do was keep him from kicking me off his ship.

Besides, I could always drop a laxative in Miller's coffee or something later.

Zaal had everyone gather up in the lounge when we finally got back to the ship. Tana still had her wing bandaged up, but she came anyway, and either Sol scowled all the time or he wasn't too happy about being left out of the bar fight. Darza was sitting on a couch in the center of the room. She had a mug of tea clutched in both hands, and she wasn't wearing her stupid black coat anymore. Quelb must have forgiven her for destroying his old body, because he was standing behind her with one hand clenched around the edge of the couch near her shoulder. Looming there like that, he looked like every new boyfriend's worst nightmare.

"I think it's time you told us why Nerat is after us."

Zaal sounded like he was trying to stay calm. He was pretty angry though. You could tell by the stiff way each word came creaking out of his mouth. His accent got a little thicker, too. Darza flinched back like he'd hit her.

"I know. I just—I don't know where to start. I'm so confused."

Sol planted his huge ass next to Zaal and bent down to get a better look at the little asari. "Don't screw with us. You didn't look confused when you were trying to gun Quelb down back on Thessia. Tell Zaal what he wants to know, or I'll twist you into a blue pretzel."

"Solus." Quelb made the name sound like a warning. "Threatening her will only serve to further obfuscate the truth. Until you have something of merit to contribute, I suggest that you remain silent."

Sol's eyes flared blue in that scary way powerful biotics sometimes do when they're really, really angry. He was probably going to do something drastic, but he stopped when the flanged white markings on Darza's forehead flickered in response. I could almost swear I felt my own amp twitching too.

That biotic tantrum seemed to give the girl some confidence somehow. She uncurled her hands from her drink and set it on the table in front of her.

"I guess I'll start at the beginning. I'm Darza T'Kuril. I used to be a student at the Caldaris School of Astrophysics. That's how I knew Matriarch Talmana. She's been on sabbatical for about a decade. No one's sure when she'll be back, but I didn't think it would be anytime soon."

"And that left you plenty of time to set up a trap for Quelb," Zaal pointed out.

"That's right. I didn't like doing it. Quelb is the closest thing to a real friend that I've had in years."

Tana clacked her beak and hissed a little bit. "Do you make a habit of frying your friends' circuitry?"

"Of course not! I didn't have much of a choice though. When the Lady gives you a command, you carry it out, or die trying."

"Sounds like this Nerat group is some kinda cult."

That was Miller. Informed as always.

"You wouldn't be wrong to call it that," Quelb admitted. "The members believe they are participating in a sort of religion. They think of this "Lady" as an avatar of their Goddess, sent to shape the galaxy in Her image."

"Thought the asari got over that kind of thing millennia ago," Sol muttered.

"I wish." Darza tugged at a loose thread in the couch cushion. "Goddess, I can't believe I let myself be taken in by their dogma. I really thought I was doing the right thing, running around killing people."

I took a really long, hard look at the girl. She was so tiny, even shorter than I was. She didn't look like a plasma-cannon-toting, geth-slaying berserker. She didn't act like one either.

"I think they drugged you."

Quelb's eyebrows twitched. He looked down and met Darza's eyes. "That is possible. In my haste to nullify the immediate threat, I neglected to run any medical scans on you. Young asari can be highly suggestible. It would not have been difficult for a Nerat operative to administer a mind-altering toxin during an interest rally."

"Then I'm not some crazy psychopath?"

Darza sounded so relieved it was almost cute. "Probably not. You had to be a little nuts to join Nerat in the first place, but you seem normal enough to me."

Quelb let go of the couch and offered his hand to Darza. "Nevertheless, I would like to be certain. If you will excuse us, Captain, I will escort Darza to the med bay and arrange the appropriate tests."

"Wait a second." Zaal put up his hand to stop them. Darza froze halfway through getting out of her seat.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"You never answered me. What is Nerat after? Why did they send you to interfere with our mission? Why did they target Quelb?"

"I—I don't know. I'm sorry!"

"You're wasting your time, Zaal. She really doesn't know anything."

I thought I was ready for anything. Spectre training is supposed to prepare you for every possible scenario. They never said anything about Commander Shepard's old girlfriend hacking into your brain.

Nothing really changed. The ship was still there. Everyone on Zaal's crew was still there. We just had an extra person in the room all of the sudden. Liara T'soni was standing next to Darza with her hands clasped in front of her.

"I think it's time you all learned why you're here."

* * *

><p>Codex<p>

calto: An asari term of endearment. It is one of the few gendered words in asari parlance, usually referring specifically to a male romantic partner.

Cody Miller: The executive officer of a mercenary band known as Toria's Talons, Miller keeps a low profile. A crack shot with a wide variety of ranged weapons, he is also a deadly hand-to-hand combatant. Rumor-mongers even claim that he has killed multiple turian soldiers in the ring. Since he has declined to comment, the accuracy of these statements remains in doubt.

Azil Toria: A master tactician, Commander Toria always has one more trick hidden up her sleeve. Her unpredictable style and bombastic personality have served her well in her years since leaving the meritocracy. Having lost many of her people in violence following the Harsa Exodus, Toria is currently working to restore her company to fighting form.

* * *

><p>Review Response:<p>

shadowmythic: I appreciate your enthusiasm! I don't have any current plans to include a Reaper character in this story though. Quelb was originally going to be the "real" human Reaper (I had planned on the larva from ME2 being a decoy). When I decided that he was going to be Zaal's mentor/uncle, it just made more sense for him to be a former geth.


	11. Ghouls

Chapter Eleven: Ghouls

Sol wasn't really surprised to see Liara there. She'd already invaded his headspace once. Darza was scared out of her mind though. She recoiled from the spot where Holo Liara sat and almost ran out of the room. Quelb grabbed the girl's hand and held it, keeping her rooted in place.

"While it is good to meet you at last, Doctor T'soni, I think perhaps you should consider explaining your presence here. Clearly I need to re-evaluate the ship's shielding, as neither you nor Spectre Taptrin appear to have any difficulty getting transmissions through."

"When I learned that my niece had left her undergraduate program to join a group of zealots and extremists, I was rather worried. Darza has never been a homebody, but neither was she especially rebellious."

"If you knew she was in distress, why did you not take steps to rescue her?"

Liara clasped both hands over one of her knees and leaned toward Quelb. "There are several reasons why I chose not to intervene personally. They're all rather complicated and involved, so I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't go into them right now. Suffices to say that I sent a friend to watch over her. He seems to have kept her out of the worst of it."

"You think so?" Sol didn't want to grill Liara. She was his aunt as much as she was Darza's. He looked up to her. "What's worse than getting drugged out of your mind and tricked into dismantling your pen pal?"

"Attempted genocide."

Liara's reply was smooth and crisp. She always seemed to talk like that, like she knew everything and she was just being kind enough to reveal a part of the puzzle. "I believe Nerat was involved in bringing down the batarian Hegemony."

The new guy, Miller, coughed like he had something to say. "The Reapers torched Khar'shan forty years ago. The batarians didn't need a whole lot of encouragement to tear each other apart after that."

"And you should know, having been there during their final moments," Liara replied. "One day you will have to tell me the story of how you and Commander Toria escaped the violence of the Exodus."

"We didn't."

Miller ran a finger across the scar on his forehead like he was reminding himself of something. Sol realized that even though the man was probably less than thirty years old; he'd seen more death and destruction than anyone on the ship. Except Liara. She didn't really count, since she wasn't actually there.

"Why didn't you come with us?"

Sol almost shivered. Zaal sounded terrified. He sounded like a lost, lonely teenager again. Liara looked grim.

"I'm not your keeper, Zaal. When you came to me with this idea, I gave you what you needed to get into the sky. This is your mission. My presence would only have held you back."

"T'soni." Taptrin went over and stuck her face right up next to Liara's. "I'm sick of your mysterious act. Say what you came to say, or I'm shutting you down."

Liara spread her hands and smiled. "You are certainly welcome to try. Zaal has attempted to access my private network on multiple occasions."

"Couldn't even break the first layer of encryption," Zaal admitted.

"So you've got the biggest pair in the room, we get it," Taptrin snapped. "You're still wasting our time."

"What an amusingly human turn of phrase. John would have been proud."

That shut the Spectre up real quick.

"Much as I would like to bring you all onto my ship and let Janae serve you tea and biscuits, I can't afford the risk at the moment. I have never kept my love of other races a secret, and so I and my daughter have become targets. There may still be one way I can assist you though, if you are willing."

Zaal was still in his self-destructive fugue, so Sol picked up the slack. "Shoot. Not like we have a clue anyway."

"You are closer than you might think. I recently received information indicating that someone on Earth is trying to sell an N7 breather helmet they claim Commander Shepard was wearing when he entered the transportation field that carried him up to the Citadel. Supposedly the helmet contains fragments of his skull."

"I heard about that," Taptrin said, "some kind of black market auction or something. We thought it was just a hoax."

"That may yet prove to be the case. Still, if the find is genuine; it may lead to further evidence that could tell us how—or even if—John perished while he was aboard the Citadel. Regardless, I will provide you with the location of the auction. Whether you choose to act on the information will be up to you."

Taptrin glanced over at Miller. "Sounds like we're headed home, buddy!"

The mercenary didn't answer, but he looked troubled.

Once they reached Earth proper, it took them two days to get through EDF security. Then they had to contend with a squad of suspicious human customs agents, who came aboard the ship like they belonged there and proceeded to search every nook and cranny they could find for contraband. Zaal roused from his funk long enough to shout down the leader of the red tape coterie, but his heart wasn't in it. In the end, the _Treno_ had to stay in high orbit over the home world while a small group flew down in a shuttle.

With Tana unable to use her wings and Quelb still getting used to his new body, Sol found himself landing in Yunnan Province alongside the two humans, neither of whom he trusted to have his back in a fight.

"It's raining," he observed, peering out through the shuttle's tiny porthole.

"That's why they call it a rainforest."

Zaal was up front in the pilot's chair while Sol and the humans were crammed together in the shuttle's claustrophobically small cargo compartment. There was just barely enough room for them and all their gear, if Sol stooped and they all got real cozy. Sol did a little dance with the human mercenary so he could stick his head into the cockpit.

"Hey Zaal. You want me to rip your waste tube out through your primary induction port, you go on acting like a little shit. If you want to keep your face lookin' pretty, then shut the hell up."

The quarian winced a little bit, but he didn't quite cringe. That was a good sign that maybe he was recovering from the confrontation with Liara. Sol squeezed back into position and held on while his friend brought the shuttle in for a landing.

"You coming with us?" Sol asked.

Zaal hesitated for a moment before he answered. "I don't think so. Someone needs to stay here and keep the shuttle prepped for a speedy getaway. Never know what might be out there."

"Lions. Tigers. Other fuzzy beasts," Taptrin quipped. Sol and Zaal glanced at one another in confusion; most of that had been lost in translation. Taptrin cursed under her breath and banged on the hatch. "Let's get the hell out of this sardine tin, all right? This krogan smells like warmed-over death, and the merc ain't much better."

Zaal obliged her by opening the hatch, and the heat hit rolled over them like the wave of scalding air that flies out of an open oven door. Unlike the interior of an oven, the rainforest was wet. A torrent of water hammered down from the sky overhead, and as he stepped out into the forest, each drop seemed determined to land squarely on Sol's head.

"Reminds me of home." The rain made a valiant effort to run down into his armor, but the moisture had little success finding and openings in the flexible mesh between plates.

"Really?" Taptrin popped out from behind him. She had her yellow hair tied back in a tight bun against the back of her head. Holding her pistol ready beside her chin, she cut a very different figure from the one she'd put on the first time Sol had met her in hologram form. "I'll have to cancel my trip to Tuchanka then. Can't stand the heat."

Miller brought up the rear, his largest rifle already cocked near his hip. If the rain annoyed him, he showed no sign of it. His mouth was a thin line beneath the heavy combat specs he wore across his eyes. The huge lenses made him look like an oversized _skrill._

Sol's boots sank a thumb's length into the mud as soon as he took a step forward. He'd never been anywhere with this much moisture. Even the best tended Tuchankan gardens were filled up mostly with cacti and other plants that preferred dry weather. Here in this human forest, Sol saw ferns, trees, and flowers of every possible shape and color. He was a little envious, but at the same time obscurely nostalgic for home.

He yanked one boot free of the mud with a soft sucking sound and started off in the direction Zaal had marked on their map. An insect of some kind landed on his plates and promptly tried to sting him. Sol grinned; the little monster couldn't even get through the tough outermost layer of his skin. After half a minute of fruitless attacks, the thing flew off in search of easier targets. Part of Sol hoped it would go after the Spectre. Realistically he knew she would probably have come prepared with some kind of noisome ointment to fend off the bugs, but he could dream, couldn't he?

It was surprisingly easy going as they traversed the bush. They were in a part of the forest where the underbrush grew tight around the base of each tree and left large portions of the terrain relatively clear. Sol still had to dodge long, hanging vines and the arched roots of trees that had decided bust up out of the ground, but at least he and the others didn't have to blast their way through the jungle.

"No major heat readings in the vicinity," Miller reported.

Sol sniffed, and his nose confirmed the merc's words. "Big predators probably all ran when they heard the shuttle drop."

"Doubt it. Forest floor's clear as far as I can make out. Some birds and small mammals in the trees. That's about it."

"What's the range on that headgear?"

"Two point seven kilometers."

Taptrin peered off into the forest around them like she thought she might find something among the moist greenery that Miller's goggles missed.

"Not very current equipment, is it?" she observed.

"Current enough to catch you sneaking around," Sol replied.

"I wasn't trying very hard."

"Whatever. Anything out there that might explain why all the beasts ran off?"

Miller pushed his goggled back onto the top of his head and shook it. "Nothing. It all looks normal. Just like a rainforest should, except for the animals."

"_Your pardon, ground team."_

Miller's head shot up as Quelb's deep voice came across the comms. "_We are currently monitoring the area from orbit. Doctor Habaq agrees that the level of animal activity is lower by far than average for a rainforest in the midst of the monsoon season; however the ship's sensors indicate no abnormalities in either air pressure or temperature. We detect no recent signs of deforestation. Yet your personal observations from the surface show clearly that there is something wrong. We therefore surmise that our readings are faulty."_

"My specs work just fine," Miller protested mildly.

"_Indeed. The error is not in the function of our equipment, but in the readings themselves. Doctor Habaq and I believe that an advanced form of heat shielding installed beneath the forest floor has been set in place to baffle any outside sensors."_

"Doesn't sound like a one-time auctioneer's pavilion."

"_Certainly, Mr. Miller. We arrived at a similar conclusion. I recommend that you proceed with caution. If the proprietors of this establishment have the capacity to conceal their thermal emissions, they may also have methods for intercepting external communications."_

"So I wouldn't have to listen to you rattling around in my ears anymore?" Sol grinned. "Sounds beautiful."

"_Your sarcasm is noted. Doctor Habaq assures me that it will be taken into account during our next mealtime. Good day."_

Sol must have looked nonplussed. Taptrin let off a short burst of laughter-quiet enough not to give away their position-not so quiet that Sol couldn't hear it.

"Sorry big guy. You were kind of being an asshat though."

"Why does he talk like that?"

Miller was looking intently at Sol. Maybe he thought he'd find the answer to his question's somewhere in the krogan's plates.

"Why does who talk like what?"

"That Quelb guy. I've met marines packing less muscle than that, but he sounds like my old Philosophy professor before she had her first coffee of the day."

Sol rubbed his hands thoughtfully across his plates as he skirted an enormous stand of bamboo stalks. It was a bit of a readjustment to think that the taciturn merc might have some formal education. "Always been like that, long as I can remember. Could probably kill a salarian just by boring him to death."

"Any particular reason he speaks in a quarian dialect?"

Sol peered at the mercenary through the loosely gathered bamboo, but he couldn't think of a way to explain Quelb to an outsider.

"He's a geth."

Taptrin kept her eyes focused on the forest. She seemed more serious now, like she sensed that they might be attacked at any moment and there wasn't any time for her usual antics.

"He looks human though."

"Sure does! That'll be the Alliance-made body I procured for him. Don't let the beefy exterior fool you-Quelb's an egghead through and though."

Miller probably wouldn't be satisfied with that explanation, but they didn't have time to go into it. Out in the lead, Sol took a step across what looked like a perfectly ordinary bed of wildflowers.

His boots crunched down on dry earth and dead leaves, and then he was in the middle of a firefight. Gunshots seemed to come from every direction at once. Even though none of them were aimed directly at Sol, several still slammed into his barrier. Momentarily stunned, he couldn't do more than stand where he was and absorb the hits.

Miller and Taptrin came flying across the threshold. The mercenary tackled Sol from behind to get him out of the line of fire while Taptrin ducked behind the trunk of a nearby tree and started shooting back.

The first thing Sol noticed as the shell shock started to wear off was that either the rain had stopped or something was keeping it from getting through. Then he was throwing up a quick barrier bubble to protect him and the human mercenary as they crawled, hopped, and scrambled into cover. They ended up somewhere cadi-corner to Taptrin's position. At least, Sol thought they did. With the buzz of his amp whirring in his ears, it was hard for him to tell where anything was.

"We were lucky," Miller told him. "They aren't really shooting at us."

Sol winced as a wound in his upper arm made itself known with a painful twinge. "Could've fooled me. Who brings that kind of firepower to an auction?"

Miller pursed his lips as he prepped an application of medigel for Sol's arm. "Soldiers, pirates, arms dealers. Us."

He had a point there. Sol exhaled gratefully as the cool, numbing gel drove away some of the pain. The two of them had their backs pressed up against the side of a plasticised structure that had no business being in the middle of a rainforest. Sol hadn't met a whole lot of salarians in his time, but he thought he recognized the Special Task Group's emblem. It was there, just a few feet down the building's façade, painted in ugly orange and black.

Miller followed Sol's eyes and saw the STG insignia. "The salarians are mixed up with this?" He didn't seem very surprised. "Doesn't matter. We should pick up the Spectre and get the hell out of here."

"What? We can't leave now! Zaal'll kill me in my sleep if I don't at least try to find out what's going on in there."

"So you'd rather go in and get us all killed for sure?"

Sol yanked his rifle out of its slot at the middle of his back and flicked his wrist to extend the barrel. "Never said that. This above your pay grade? Stay here, or head back to the shuttle."

"_Oh come on merc boy. This is where you earn your credits! It's a little soon for you to wuss out on us, don't you think?"_

Miller released his own rifle—a batarian W'rasha, if Sol was any judge—and replaced his goggles across his eyes. "Short range comms are still up."

Sol took a moment to admire the man's aplomb in the face of battle (and Taptrin's questionable wit). He inched his way along the wall until he was close enough to look around the edge.

There were six buildings of varying sizes sticking up from the earth, all bearing the marks of salarian technology and the STG insignia. Counting Taptrin's pistol shots, gunfire was crossing the tamped-down earth in the center of the compound from at least four different directions. Sol had to pop back behind his protective wall before he could do more than let off a hastily aimed singularity.

"Looks like a bunch of salarians were running the show," he told Miller.

"All right. Why bring in STG though?"

"_Because what they've got is the real deal!"_

Taptrin was enjoying this. Sol wasn't sure whether it was the fighting or the thought of finding the human hero's remains, but something had the Spectre excited. Sol started to duck around the side of the building again, but Miller caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

"Wait a second. How do we know which of them to shoot?"

Sol almost laid the man out for putting a hand on him. There was no arguing with logic though. "No idea. Salarians all look the same to me."

"Maybe we should try to get in touch with your ship."

"_Already tried,"_ Taptrin informed them breathlessly. _"Can't get through. Those thermal shunts Quelb told us about must be interfering."_

"We could just wait for them to kill each other," Miller suggested.

"A sound plan. Unlikely to succeed, however. Please drop your weapons and surrender peacefully."

Sol cursed violently as he felt the cold barrel of a submachine gun press up against the side of his head. Beside him, a stealth field dissolved to reveal an STG operative in full combat gear. Sol didn't have any choice; he let his rifle drop to the ground. This close, his strongest barrier wouldn't do a thing to stop a round from the salarian's gun from opening his skull and spilling his brains out on the soil.

Neither of them had accounted for Miller's reflexes. As soon as Sol dropped his gun, the mercenary kicked out with his left leg and sent the STG operative sprawling to the ground. It didn't take the salarian long to spring back and recover, but by then Sol had his barrier up and a stasis field primed to lock the amphibian in place if he so much as croaked.

"That wasn't very gentlemanly of you!" the creature protested. He ducked as more stray gunfire came his way. Miller aimed his rifle at the salarian's head.

"You threatened my employer at gunpoint."

The salarian might have looked angry then. Sol wasn't terribly up to date on frog language.

"I could have filled your friend's thick skull with bullets if I wanted to!" He winced as a shot hit his shield. Sol seized his arm and yanked him back into cover.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Torazo Denassi. Yourself?"

Baffled by the salarian's behaviour, Sol looked over at Miller. The mercenary shrugged. Clearly he didn't understand either. He kept his rifle levelled on their new captive though, which was comforting.

"Maybe you'll live to find out someday," Sol told Denassi. "What's STG doing here?"

The salarian burst out laughing. "Wait, you actually thought I was STG? Unbelievable!"

"You've got STG colors on, and the STG insignia on these prefabs," Sol jabbed a finger in the direction of the module beside him, just in case the crazy salarian couldn't find it on his own.

"That old thing? That's just a mockup the STG circulates to fool outsiders. If they even have a real one, you don't think they'd let anyone actually see it. Do you?"

"Who are you working for then?"

Denassi broke down into another fit of giggles then. While Sol was considering head-butting him to shut him up, Taptrin took advantage of a lull in the fighting and made her way over to them.

"There's more than just salarians out here," she informed them. "Saw a few turians and a bunch of humans. Even a batarian or two. I don't even want to know what those guys want with a piece of Shepard's corpse."

Denassi's mirth cut off suddenly. He seemed to recognize Taptrin's voice. "You're Katrina Taptrin! The Spectre!"

Taptrin leered malevolently at him. "Oh how nice. It speaks. Pipe down, will you Froggy? People are trying to talk here."

The sound of fighting was beginning to move off. Whoever was attacking the compound was making some progress. Sol grabbed Denassi again and got in his face.

"Who's running this place?"

"No idea, friend! I'm just a hired gun. They put us all in these fake STG uniforms in case the Alliance tries to crash the party."

Miller nudged his rifle's safety into the locked position, but he kept the weapon out as he backed up to the spot where Sol was holding Denassi. "Salarian crime family, most likely. No one else hires salarians for guard duty."

"And they're trafficking in human remains." Taptrin holstered her pistol and consulted her omnitool. Sol waited impatiently while the woman scanned lines of code. He almost wished Denassi would start laughing again. Then at least he'd have an excuse to pummel the idiot.

"Sounds like the Hiral family," Taptrin said finally. "Seeta Hiral and her brothers are infamous here on Earth. They fly in on their stealth frigates and raid the tombs of famous Alliance citizens. Then they fly back out, all before anyone realizes they're here. Guys, if this really is Seeta's work, we're in a whole lot deeper than we thought."

"Already pretty far down the shitter," Sol pointed out. The look Taptrin gave him remind him uncannily of the way his sister Brell looked when she thought her brother had said something unconscionably stupid.

"If Nerat and the Hiral family are in this together—well let's just say I'm starting to see why T'soni lured me in on this one."

Sol let go of the salarian. Suddenly robbed of support, Denassi stumbled and pressed a webbed hand up against the wall beside them. He looked stunned.

"The Hiral family? Really? That's—that's freaking hilarious!"

Taptrin snorted to show what she thought of that reaction. "What do you guys want to do with him? Tie him up? He'll probably break out of whatever restraints we put him in. Kill him now so he can't follow us?"

Sol shrugged. "Kill him, I guess. He came in under a cloak. That type'll stab you in the back as soon as he gets a chance."

"You're right. He does remind me a little of Zaal."

Taptrin aimed the barrel of her pistol at Denassi's forehead. The wretched amphibian just started giggling again.

"Wait."

Miller got between the Spectre and her victim and motioned for her to lower her weapon. "He might know what the inside of the compound looks like."

"And he might have a sack of red sand stitched to his intestines," Taptrin returned. "Who cares? It's not like we can bring him with us."

"We shouldn't kill him if we don't have to."

"We have to! He already got the jump on us once. I don't get it Cody. You're supposed to be the tough, battle-hardened merc. What gives?"

"He tried to capture us, not kill us. There's no advantage in slaughtering him here."

"Sure there is! The advantage of not having a stealth goon on our tails the whole way in."

Denassi stirred. He didn't seem too scared by the prospect of death by Spectre pistol. "If it'll make you feel safer, I'll give you my cloaking module."

"Like I believe you'll give us the real one."

Denassi's answering grin was a little lopsided. "Look, do whatever you want, Spectre. Might want to get it over with though. Mama Hiral won't be too happy when her boys finish cleaning up the riffraff and find you three trespassing."

Sol didn't have a whole lot of time to make a decision. He had to go with his gut. He grabbed the salarian by the seat of his armor and yanked him upright. "You're coming with us."

Taptrin made a noise halfway between a gasp and a splutter. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"Don't want salarian blood on my gear," Sol replied. He hid a smile as he pulled Denassi's arms around behind his back. "Shit's a pain to get out. Either of you have restraints?"

Miller plucked a pair of cuffs from a compartment just above his hip and handed them off to Sol.

"Here's the deal, Denassi." Sol got the cuffs into place around the salarian's wrists and fiddled with them for a few seconds until a pair of mass effect fields cinched the little circles of metal tight. "You get to live, but you go first. We run into any trouble we can't handle; you get to find out how well salarian hides hold up against bullet storms. We get in, find what we need, and get out, and we'll drop you off at the Surkeshian Embassy."

"I can live with that."

"Let's all hope you do," Taptrin muttered.

* * *

><p>Codex<p>

The Harsa Exodus: In the year 2222, the remnants of the batarian Hegemony—long since bereft of any real leadership—collapsed into warring factions that turned on one another and touched off the bloodiest civil war the Milky Way has ever seen. In just two short years, the entire batarian population of the galaxy was nearly obliterated. Survivors fled Hegemony space with whatever they could take, in whatever ships they could find, steal, or restore. To date, there are no known batarian inhabitants living in the Harsa system, where once a great empire grew and flourished.

Skrill: A small nocturnal reptile native to Tuchanka, the skrill is often mentioned in krogan oral traditions as having unusually large eyes and keen vision. They feast on insects and smaller reptiles by night, but by day they usually sleep or rest in patches of open sunlight.

Doctors Xiaocao Ji and Bao Ji: The masterminds of an ambitious rainforest restoration project that started at the end of the twentieth century and achieved completion in the year 2104. Credited with the creation of the first viable terraforming technology in human history, these two scientists spearheaded the campaign to bring biodiversity back to their native Yunnan Province. Today, the Ji Memorial Rainforest flourishes across miles of equatorial China; a veritable shrine to the ingenuity and heart of the human race.

* * *

><p>Reader Responses:<p>

cellotlix: I'm glad you like Quelb and the space opera vibe! Quelb takes me about five times longer to write than anyone else, but I really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as much as you seem to have liked the beginning.

Sailor Amber: My bad; I should have known that if I had to look up what Harsa was, everyone else would too. Harsa is the star system where the batarian homeworld was before Shepard exploded it. I added a little blurb about the Exodus in the Codex for this chapter; hopefully that helps a bit.

shadowmythic: I've sprinkled in some more detailed descriptions in this chapter, so maybe that will help give a better picture of what's going on. As always, thanks for reading!


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